About

Grounded in historical materials such as silverpoint, gold, mineral pigment, and egg tempera, Amy Dean's practice is shaped by a love for the materials themselves. Her practice as an iconographer is to unite the depicted with the viewer while allowing the material to lightly shape the image. These compositions balance reverence and invention, employing both creativity and canonical discipline.
Dean thinks of her other studio work like poetry or music, each piece composed through rhythm and movement. For her, every piece of found paper or parchment is beautiful; its history is revealed through texture, tone, and age. These works, too, employ ancient materials. Through them she converses with the history of artists who came before her, participating in an ongoing dialogue between the ancient and the new.