Amy Pleasant

Amy Pleasant is a Seattle figurative painter. Born and raised in Ohio, the influence of her midwestern roots is evident in her color-saturated abstract expressionist figurative paintings. Her exploration of the idea of memory and generational transition followed the inheritance of the family albums. This interest expanded in a gathering of discarded black and white photos from flea markets and thrift stores on her yearly trips to Ohio. After spending several years in the classroom as a general education and secondary teacher, she returned to art school to study design at the Art Institute of Seattle and the Drawing and Painting Atelier at the Gage Academy of Art in Seattle.

Amy has participated in national exhibitions in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York, and has had solo exhibitions in Seattle, Dallas, Canton, OH, and Amsterdam. In 2014 she was one of twelve artists featured nationally by the Woman's Caucus for the Arts and was a recipient of an Artist Trust Gap grant in 2015. Most recently, she has shown in the San Juan Islands Museum of Art, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, and just closed a 78-painting exhibition, Family Album at the Canton Museum of Art. She has been awarded the Bloedel Reserve Community Creative Residency for 2024. Her work can be found in corporate and personal collections throughout the West, Midwest, and the Netherlands.

Amy is also a writer, and her poetry and freelance writing can be found on her blog, Life Meets Art, the Huffington Post, and Bust Magazine.