Amy Bautz's canvases have a liquidity that almost makes you feel that the paint on them may never dry. Droplets of mysterious fluids fly in every direction. Flowers and animals drip, cry, and bleed, merging into one another as though all of life, both substantively and temporally, was cut into pieces and later conjoined like Siamese quintuplets. Birth, life, and death play out in both animal and plant kingdoms. Amy Bautz makes the images she needs to see.

"I won¹t know if they have the effect I want until they materialize," she tells me, "I struggle with the meaninglessness of being, trying to find reason to believe. Painting is a search for that; to make things out of other things, to produce and to reproduce, to create something from the materials of self. I want art to make me want to be alive; sometimes painting itself is reason enough to be alive and the art of being alive is a kind of magic." She namechecks Michael Pollan¹s "The Botany of Desire: A Plant¹s-Eye View of the World² saying, "I was very taken by that book. I merge plant and animal life. That¹s how the world feels to me; teeming, intertwined. I often find myself funneling twenty or so simultaneous thoughts into one image, painting flowers, vegetables, and animals, often wounded or dead, overlapping on the same canvas. It lets me paint about sex, love, and reproduction in a less obvious, forward way, although there¹s usually sperm and tears flying around." Sperm And Tears; that would be a great title for a show, I tell her. "I¹m into bodily fluids," she laughs, "I thought breastfeeding was a total trip."

Tom Lunt, Co-director
Abramson Arts Foundation, Chicago
4.2.2014 Read Less

JURIED (REFEREED), COMMISSIONED AND INVITATIONAL EXHIBITIONS OF FINE ART

Animation exhibited at Public Media Showcase, St. Louis, June 2016

Two-person exhibit at Wonderwall Studio, Austin, Texas, November 2015

Collaborated on activist installation/upcycled sculpture for Artica Arts Festival in protest of planned football stadium expansion, St. Louis, October 2015

Collaborated on a fire installation at St Louis Fringe Festival, Grand Center, June 2015

Featured artist at Wonderwall Studio, Austin, Texas, May, 2015

Utopia Everywhere Zine published by Fort Gondo with support from the Mellon Foundation. April, 2015.

Invited to participate creating a collaborative installation artwork at Artica, an annual arts festival in
North St. Louis on the Mississippi river, October 2014.

Painting commissioned by Spellman Brady design firm for St. John’s Mercy women’s clinic, St. Louis, June, 2014.

Digital drawing commissioned for cover of a book on Sylvia Plath, Stephen F. Austin University Press, January 2014.

Invitational exhibit of ten paintings in a two-person exhibit at the St. Louis Artists’ Guild, St. Louis, January 2013.

Invitational exhibit of digital photograph, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Los Angeles, August 2012.

Invitational exhibit of drawing made as part of an interview series published in Feast Magazine, Booze Doodles, where St. Louis artists were given cocktails and pens and napkins, Aisle 1 Gallery, St. Louis, November 2012.

Two Paintings exhibited in a group show, Yellow Bear Gallery, St. Louis, November 2012.

Painting commissioned on the topic of parenthood and artmaking for exhibition at the Millstone Gallery, St. Louis, Summer 2011.

Three paintings included at an invitational exhibit at the Edwardsville Art Center, April 2011.

Sixteen new paintings exhibited August 2010 in an invitational six-person exhibit at Mad Art Gallery, St. Louis.

Six computer artworks maintained in the invitational Flat Files collection of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, currently since 2007.

Six paintings shown in an invitational, two-person show at East Central College, February through March 2009.

Three new paintings were shown in an invitational exhibit with other contemporary painters at the Edwardsville Arts Center, June through August 2008.

Paintings and computer artwork exhibited in an invitational, two-person show at Culver-Stockton Fine Art Gallery in Canton, Missouri, October through November 2005.

Photography, computer artwork and painting exhibited 2006 through 2009, in an annual invitational exhibition at Hoffman La Chance Contemporary Gallery, St. Louis.

Computer artwork selected for the 7th Annual Renaissance Regional juried Art Exhibit outside of Nashville, Tennessee, November 2005.

Fifteen computer art pieces shown in a solo invitational exhibit in the Heritage Hall of the Headquarters of the Athens, Georgia, Regional Library System, May 2004.

Digital photograph selected for the National Juried Exhibit at the Union Street Gallery in Chicago, March and April 2004

Digital photograph selected for inclusion in the New Jersey Center for Visual Arts International Juried Show 2004, February 2004.

Digital photograph selected for the Seventh National Juried Photography Exhibition, Center for the Visual Arts, University of Toledo, January 2004.

Mixed-media work selected by jury for inclusion in the 53rd annual Quad State Exhibition, Quincy Illinois, May and June 2003.

Paintings, computer art, and sculpture shown in a solo invitational exhibit in May 2001 at the Berlin, Germany gallery, Tagebau.

Paintings and computer art shown in a solo invitational exhibit in March 2000 at the Berlin, Germany gallery, Transfer International. Read Less

Associate Professor, current position since 1999 at Saint Louis University, Department of Fine and Performing Arts

Artist at Wonderwall Studio, Austin Texas current since 2015

Animation Team Member, Blue Peach Media, NYC current since 2009

Program Director, Studio Art, current position since summer 2014, at Saint Louis University

Director, Visual Communication Certificate since 2007, at Saint Louis University

Animation Team Member, since 2009 at Blue Peach Media, New York City

Freelance Photojournalist, 1994-2003 at Riverfront Times, St. Louis

Adjunct Assistant Professor, August 1997 to May 1999 at the UMSL, Fine Art Department

Freelance Computer Graphic Artist, August 1994 to August 1999, St. Louis, Missouri

Software Instructor, May to December 1998, at Forest Park Community College

Photography Instructor, August to December 1998, at Fontbonne University, St. Louis

Drawing and Photography Teaching Assistant, January 1996 to May 1998, at SIUE

Computer Graphic Artist, June 1992 to August 1994, at Logibyte Software Distributor, Berlin, Germany

Freelance Computer Graphic Artist, September 1991 to July 1993, Berlin, Germany

Editorial Assistant, January 1990 to July 1992, at Walther de Gruyter Publishing House, Berlin, Germany
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