Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. For artist Amy Jamison, some of the most beautiful artworks have a message. She makes watercolor paintings of fruits and vegetables, with the statement of shopping and growing local. “I think it’s more important now than it’s ever been to shop at local farms and support their work,” she says, adding how much she loves regenerative farming. “With the current outbreak of Cyclosporiasis it is an eye opener about mass farming.”
But she hasn’t always painted fruits and vegetables with watercolors. Before creating art with a mission, Jamison primarily painted with soft pastels, acrylics and oils to make landscapes. “I was actually afraid of using watercolors for a long time. But when I opened Amy’s Art Studio and Gallery in Wentzville in 2016, I knew I needed some instruction in watercolors,” she says.
It was then that she decided to take a workshop with Paul Jackson out of Columbia, Missouri in 2017, and it gave her the encouragement she needed to try her hand at watercolors. “At that time, I felt like I knew enough to teach watercolors well, but they still weren’t my favorite. In 2021 I decided to get serious about them.”
She began with still lifes, artistic compositions of inanimate objects—traditionally bowls of fruit—that give artists the chance to explore form, color and composition while conveying a deeper message. This was when she first started thinking about how to paint fruits and vegetables to promote shopping and growing local. “With small farming, I have met the farmers, and have gotten to see their facilities, and I trust what they’re doing. I know those farmers aren’t spraying chemicals on their crops,” she says.
Eventually, her work became a nod to her favorite artist, Georgia O’Keefe, an American modernist who played with color and size to dramatic effect. “Similar to her work, I like to examine everyday objects that we often overlook and bring attention to them, noticing the beautiful details.” In 2023, she applied to the St. Louis Art Fair's Emerging Artist program with paintings she had been practicing with and was accepted. “Things sort of snowballed after that, and I fell in love with the process and watercolors.”
Her process starts with sourcing items for her still lifes: visiting local farms or farms’ markets. “What I find dictates what I paint. I will take those items back to the studio and make a big mess arranging and cutting things.” Then, she photographs the items, as produce might wilt before she can complete a painting. It also allows her to focus on developing her own hallmark artistic features, since by painting from a photo, she doesn’t have to worry about chasing moving shadows or light sources. “I am now starting to play around with scale and making things larger than they are like O’Keefe did, and I like where my work is heading,” she says.
She is currently showing work at Missouri Artists On Main in St. Charles and Grafica in Webster Groves. She will also be teaching workshops at Missouri Artists On Main.
See more of Amy's art at https://www.amyjamisonfineart.com/
