Amy J. Dyck’s work is a unique mix of representational and playful expressionism, striving to express something deeper in the human experience than can be observed by the eye. It references her struggles with a body that does not do as it should and her journey toward acceptance, resistance, and resilience in the midst of suffering.
Amy holds a certificate in Design Studies from KPU and has spent a decade practicing human anatomy and the techniques of the Old Masters. She is always pushing her practice in new directions.
Interviewed by CBC Arts Minute, she has also had her work featured in several art magazines and has won awards and cash prizes in numerous international art exhibitions and competitions. Her work is in collections around North America and the world.
What initially sparked your interest in art?
When we are young, it can be intoxicating to discover that we are able to make our pencil lines look like (or remind us of) real things and real people. This power excited me, and it opened the door to exploring the telling of visual stories, imagining alternative realities on paper, expressing my emotions and desires, and making people smile. I've been building on this ever since.
What connects your work together, and what keeps you creating?
Over the past six years, since ending up in a wheelchair and enduring years of treatments due to a complex chronic health condition and PTSD, my work has focused on trying to understand who we become and how we evolve as people when faced with hard things. The collages, paintings, and sculptures I create reflect the psychological complexity many of us experience when we have spent years being at war with ourselves or our bodies, as well as the resources we now have to pull from as we evolve, adapt, and uncover our resilience.
Also, I am fascinated by the parts of us we reject, what we may consider gross or bad (often called "our shadow"), and how these parts of us can also be supportive and important when they are understood and integrated into the whole of us. So you will see monsters or ghosts or strange things consistently show up in my work.
I keep creating because art is the modality I use to help me understand myself and others, to imagine what else could be true, to play and laugh when life gets so serious, and to move towards healing. The cycle is completed for me when I can share my work with others, and they can glean the same things from my work, too.
Describe your work using three words.
Whimsical, dynamic, multifaceted.
What are you most proud of as an artist, whether it's a specific moment or who you are as an artist?
I'm most proud of the times my work has been a mirror for others to see themselves more clearly, rediscovering their own complexity, beauty, and resilience. When people have spoken to me at my exhibits or over email and tell me about what my work has meant to them, the times it reflects their own experiences, and the ways it expresses feelings they didn't have words for, I feel so proud and deeply grateful to get to do this thing.
If you could be in a two-person exhibition with any artist from history, who would it be and why?
Kathe Kollwitz—she could express so much emotion through the way she selected and moved her marks around the page, prioritizing her feelings about the subject over the most accurate and photographic way to draw something. She dug into difficult themes to create such a moving collection of work. Showing my work beside hers would be humbling, but there is nothing like placing your work directly beside that of your heroes to show you where you could improve.
