Art Competition Archive

Paintings by Amy Spitzer

As a child, I was rather shy and solitary and lived in my imagination. I fantasized about the world in rain puddles and beyond the reflection in my bedroom mirror. As I grew up and moved into the real world, my artwork developed from my need to explore my feelings in both worlds.

My parents were not encouraging. My mother wanted me to be a concert pianist. My father was fixed that I would be a doctor. By the seventh grade, when my art teacher told me that I had ruined my project for the art fair by being rather free in my treatment of the background space, I stopped doing any drawing and painting until my early twenties and really didn’t think about art.

In the first semester of my senior year of college, I went on a foreign studies program to Japan. I took three classes, one of which was Japanese art history. The class captivated me and awakened a new interest in art work, especially painting. I loved sumi-e paintings and wood block prints and went searching to buy old prints. But even more, the design orientation of the society kindled a sleeping passion.

I came back to school in America for my last semester and only took art history classes and independent study in art history. I then prepared to go into the field of art restoration, even apprenticing for a short time with the conservator of American art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I needed additional undergraduate credits to apply to programs in this area, but as soon as I took my first studio classes, I knew I was a painter. …