August 21,2009 Paintings for Amsterdam Hermitage Halloween show

Amy cohenbanker.com

Part I. General Statement

Amy Cohen Banker is an artist working in a variety of mediums,
including acrylic, oil, pastels, oil sticks, varnishes and glazes. Her style
incorporates a beautiful synthetic realism and lyrical abstraction for
selective consumer, art collector, interior designer, curators and more.
Banker offers fine art and design services for both consumers and
businesses: paintings, landscapes, portraits, still lifes, installations;
watercolors and giclée prints; photography; prints, postcards and book
illustrations. Banker creates design projects for public and private
interiors and exteriors, and murals of all scales for public and private
spaces. She is open to new projects, collaborations and private
training.

She explores the basic issues of opacity, color, form, depth,

obfuscation and revelation in life, language and in art. I cannot help
but be influenced by philosophy, poetry, literature, psychological
symbolism, fairy tales, music, myths, conceits, and metaphors,
especially of strong feminist models: women’s conflicting roles in a
changing time throughout the centuries.
She uses background in design, two and three dimensional techniques
and aesthetics. Her background is integrated with, writing, psychology,
early childhood and current life experiences evolving as a woman and
mother combining international study to explore these issues in an
organized but abstract way. She tends to reinvent the same themes,
work from a structure and then proceed by distressing, demolishing,
recreating and conserving. My major themes are inner restoration and
survival, challenging always reality vs. myth.

In 2008 Banker exhibited at La Petit Musee (see New Marlborough

Proposal additional attachment). Banker worked part time in
Berkshire County,Mass. She lived and worked in Japan for three years.
Before that she studied at Cornell University and now she has studied
music orientation at Juilliard College.

Since childhood in and near New York City, the poetry,literature and
music of the site
has determined and inspired her art. She has always rub shoulders
with the

living masters of her area and studied other artist's works of the area.
This

year she started with Tolstoy as a contribution to the Sonic Self

Hermitage show with

her "War and Pieces" film for that institution and then went back to
American classics

when invited to exhibit at New Marlborough Meeting House

Anniversary 250 year

project and later this year at Canyon Ranch,MA. Culture and great
ideas

have been germinated in Northeast United States of America as well

as in

Europe. Tolstoy knew of Abraham Lincoln and there has always been
an exchange.

Even then, cultural leaders thought globally and shared ideas and
muses.

Once more Banker is inspired by great music and literature. William

Cullen
Bryant was almost from the time of Tolstoy. Both employed
transcendental
thoughts of how the cosmopolitan bourgeouise ideas can be
superseded
by the more prosaic,every day and how common experiences can bring
us
to the "light". Both literate humanitarians influenced by nature and
universal
motifs on different continents. Both patriots and humanists and
pacifists
and romantics. Tolstoy 1828-1910 , "War and Peace" published 1869.
I am still reading in 2009. Bryant 1794-1878 was older generation.
I see concomitant contemporary themes and inspirations but Tolstoy is
the more modern and worldly.
Carter is still alive. Born 1908, two years before Tolstoy's death. More
abstract.
Charles Ives 1874-1954
William Schuman 1910-1992 (first contestantin 1962 on What's My Line)
In music,art and literature the past influences the current aesthetic in
subtle,regional,academic and international threads. Tolstoy knew of
Lincoln
and communicated with Edison. We were one world then. Carter gave
music
gift to Stravinsky. I give my paintings as an homage to these greats
inspirations.
__________________________________________________________________PART II
Titles and explanation of paintings.
1".Elliott Carter Wind Rose/Sound Fields Anniversary"
48" x 36", oil on canvas
Elliott Carter is still alive. 1908-present -What an inspiration to me
,his
abstract themes of music that are influenced by nature and
polyphonous
classics to jazz. I see color and form when I listen to current
works.
Carter taught at Cornell University , Juilliard and at Tanglewood. The
first
was my alma mater and the second two I spent much time and studies.
I was
influenced by Carter , Miles Davis,Herbie Hancock, since years in the
NYC art scene as a kid
in awe of Dali and Warhol. I have drunk from the same well to create
this painting
while in my Berkshire Mountain Southfield studio, listening to his
music while
driving,walking and painting the regional landscape.

2. " Route 22/Winter/William Schumann var.Charles Ives "America" "

48x36" oil/canvas

I rediscovered William Schumann's variation on Charles Ives'

"America" while driving on Route 22 from New York City through the
states
of New York,Connecticut and Massachusetts to get home. I considered
callling
this painting three rivers. I find it rousing and patriotic in a special
way.
It has been played in New York City and in Boston for sure.
Summer in Massachusetts brings Winter soon after and Route 22 and
Schumann
are listened to year round. The residents of Southfield and Great
Barrington
such as I are inspired globally 360 days a year but do not forget their
routes and roots.

3. " Stones and Bones"

New Marlborough,Massachusetts is steeped in history and cemetaries.
Revolutionaries,Farmers,Settlers,Underground Railroad
activists,Indians,homesteaders.
I feel as close to nature and to the people of this land.
Melville,Hawthorne,Wharton,
Carter,William Cullen Bryant,Joyce Carol Oates,Pauline Kael, Leonard
Bernstein,
Charles Ives,William Schumann,Dory Previn,Gene Shallit ,James
Taylor,YoYoma,
the Guthrie family,
were all drawn here
in recent times.
This painting was inspired by the cemetaries and the romance of the
land. I was listening to Elliott Carter and Miles Davis and John
Coltrane during the time
that I worked on it. First came Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy and now this.

4. "William Cullen Bryant" - "Romantic landscape", 48x36"

oil and acrylic on canvas, 2009.
I realized that as much as Tolstoy was known all over the world for
"War and Peace"
we had a great writer closer to home. Bryant Park was named after
this writer.
He had a law office in Great Barrington,Mass. for a time but his love
was fine arts.
I paint this landscape as an homage to his essays and his poetry such
as
"Thanatopsis". 1811-1821 Tolstoy was his predecessor but both
communicated
ideas and art. Bryant's was more concentrated in poetry and essays.