Amy Pleasant

Amy Pleasant’s work includes painting, drawing, and ceramic sculpture, all exploring the body and language through repetition. Adopting the structure of a diagram or list, Pleasant explores the fragmented figure as sign or symbol. With a limited palette and an economy of line, she draws images like writing a letter, documenting essential, universal motions and human behaviors. This repetitive drawing process creates a visual language over time, like an alphabet.

Born in 1972 in Birmingham, Alabama, she received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1994) and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art (1999). Pleasant was recently awarded the 2018 South Arts Prize for the State of Alabama and was a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Award in 2015. Other awards include the Mary Hambidge Distinguished Artist Award (2015), and Individual Art Fellowships from the Cultural Alliance of Birmingham (2008) and the Alabama State Council on the Arts (2003).

She has held solo exhibitions at Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson/NYC; whitespace gallery, Atlanta, GA; Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, IN; Birmingham Museum of Art, AL; Atlanta Contemporary, GA; among others. Her work has been included in numerous two-person and group exhibitions at venues such as the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, AL; Adams and Ollman, Portland, OR; Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, TN; Cuevas Tilleard Projects, New York, NY; Knoxville Museum of Art, TN; Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw, GA; Lamar Dodd School of Art, Athens, GA; Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN; and Weatherspoon Museum of Art, Greensboro, NC.

Her work has been reviewed in many publications including Art in America, Art Papers, Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail and Sculpture.

Pleasant’s work is in numerous collections, including the Birmingham Museum of Art, The Progressive Art Collection, and Art in Embassies.

Profile photograph by Jason Wallis