About Amy Crouch

It was at university where I discovered my love for painting and the visual elements of geometric, abstract art. During my first year of study, I took strong influence from Bridget Riley's 'Composition with Circles 7' that was on display at the National Gallery, London back in 2011. I particularly loved how when you looked at the painting, it looked like Riley might have formulated some sort of system in order to create it however, you cannot tell what the system. This inspired me to create paintings that are formulated by a set of rules. I chose a shape and decide on a starting place on the canvas and then created instructions for where that shape would be placed next, for example; 5cm left or, 10cm upwards. I also timed some paintings so, for one painting i would circles on a canvas for 1 hour.

In my second year at the university, I came to a creative block with my systems painting and decided to change what I was doing. I found inspiration from Jackson Pollock's painting and how he looses some control in how the paint falls on the canvas. I then began experimenting with different ways of losing control of the paint and created a series of paintings that involved me dripping acrylic inks onto canvas and then placing a piece of paper on top and letting the inks run into each other. I also recreated my own paintings but, used thick mixes of acrylic paint that, after letting it partially dry, I exposed to running tap water that washed away some of the paint on the canvas. For my exhibition piece that year, I used multi coloured paints and dripped them onto an un-primed canvas, let it partially dry and then jet washed the paint off. I loved how it left an array of merged colours on the canvas.

At the beginning of my third and final year, I continued to explore with different ways that I could loose control of how the paint lands on the page. I experimented with water marbling and printmaking but, went back to painting very soon after. I made new drip paintings using different methods such as, spray bottles and dripping paint from cups. Following this I wanted to experiment with interrupting the uncontrolled drip methods with something much more controlled and refined, which led me to reintroducing geometric shapes in to my works.