Tuesday Art ATTACK- Amy Sillman “Birdwatcher”

Amy Sillman was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1955. From an early age Sillman liked to stay busy being always up to try something new. For a period of time she worked in an Alaskan cannery, trained at NYU as a Japanese interpreter, and pursued her artistic interest working as an assistant in a feminist silkscreen operation in Chicago. After pursuing so many different interests Sillman finally settled down and attended the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, New York. While at school, Sillman worked with a group of fellow students to create a feminist publication on art and politics they named Heresies. She graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 1979.

Sillman was influenced greatly by the New York School painters that came before her. Despite her inspirations of the abstract expressionist masters of the 40's and 50's, Sillman's work mixes abstraction with figurative representation. Sillman has also expanded herself beyond paint incorporating collage and video in her work. Many of her works are heavily layered and house a humor, psycho sexual elements, and feminist critique. 

In the early 1990's Sillman went back so school and received her MFA from Bard College in New York in 1995. She signed with Sikkema Jenkins & Co and began showing her work in the Brent Sikkema Gallery in New York in 2000. Now her work is show through her dealers gallery locations all over the world. She held a year long solo show "Third Person Singular" that exhibited a year long portraiture and abstraction project from 2008-2009. "Third Person Singular" granted Sillman a great deal of exposure and received applauding reviews. The first large show housing a full survey of Sillman's work was in October of 2013. It was premiered at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and traveled across the United States. Today Sillman is still living in New York and very active practicing artist.