Amy Feger

• Glitch: Looking Down-Loading Yosemite, Ode to Bierstadt 2019-2022 Oil and Acrylic on Panel 53”x96” Images of Yosemite National Park have become iconic symbols of the United States of America and represent a belief in a pristine standard of natural beauty. In this painting, a section of Albert Bierstadt’s Looking Down Yosemite Valley at Sunrise painted in 1865 sunrise is eclipsed by a contemporary image of Yosemite sourced from Google Earth including the crowds of tourists lined up in their cars on pilgrimage to Half Dome. The American ideals are unresolved due to a glitch; paradise and the sublime are inaccessible and open to a horrific void into which floats an anamorphic image of the recent fires in Yosemite National Park. Imagining how a “Babel-like” catastrophic event in the virtual landscape could mirror the instability of a man-made disaster in an iconic and “protected” landscape like Yosemite National Park.
• Unholy Waters 2018 Acrylic on Panel 14”x25” An extended visit in Butte, Montana allowed me to explore the historic mining town, including Berkeley Pit, one of the largest superfund site operations in the United States where mining activity continues in the vicinity. Local residents in Butte witnessed to me about miracles, and I personally witnessed the prophetic omen of a superfund site. I was compelled to attempt to discover a “hyperobject” narrative solution to my Berkeley Pit experience.
• Glitch: Burst 2017 Acrylic on Panel 22”x36” During a “virtual hiking” mishap I discovered that it was possible for the user to penetrate, or “punch through,” the thin layer of data rendering the digital landscape. I create these paintings to qualm personal fears that a virtual representation of the landscape like the ones presented in Google Earth may at times move into the realm of the hyper-real at a time in human history when all people need to be aware of the impact of humankind on a universe of interconnected natural systems. The unpopulated realm points simultaneously back to the remains of ancient civilizations and forward to humanity’s future.
• 33°05’52.85”N 86°48’38.66”W: Shadow Ridge 2015 Acrylic on panel 14”x24” My life and my work are situated on the cusp of “The Information Age” and “The Anthropocene.” Exploring Google Earth, I discovered a ten-mile-long canyon being carved into the landscape in central Alabama by multiple contiguous mining companies within five miles of my home is. In the virtual space of the paintings, the un-natural and un-humanized landscapes of unearthed digital glitches in coding language and algorithm reflects James Bridle’s ideas of “The New Aesthetic” that reveal the truth and untruth of the coded language of the mapped landscape. This landscape is like the B-side to the residential and commercial landscapes that feed and grow from the products of the mined resources.
• Consummation 2018-2023 Acrylic on panel with a wood and copper frame Each panel 20”x12” Total Diptych 27”x23” A memorial piece to the Snow Geese that land in Berkeley Pitt, victims of climate change, the Anthropocene, the Capitalocene. A fairly small diptych, like an intimate religious icon. The cool and muted blue palette in the top half of the symmetrically balanced image contrasts with the dark, warm red at the bottom. From across the room, the static of birds blurs and blends into shapes of red, white, and blue. Up-close the detail reflects the masses of individual birds. The layers of paint create a dimensionality on the surface as the flock pulses above and below the water’s surface with rhythmic chaos. As an object and in composition the painting recollects Roman Catholic last judgement scenes without the Biblical characters. The image mutates the concept of baptism and the holy spirit to represent the martyrdom of the snow geese, the non-human souls whose deaths were a consequence of humanmade disasters.
• Perspective from the Beginning and the End. Pines, Poets & Plein Air at Flagg Mountain October 22, 2023 Watercolor on paper mounted to panel 24"x14"
• Sunset at Tova's Meadow with Controlled Burn Smoke Clouds, Spring 2022. 2022 Oil on Canvas 12"x9"
• Beavers making a wetland at the Montevallo Golf Course in Winter 2022. Watercolor on paper 12”x9” 2022
• Mill Pond and Falls on Shoal Creek, Summer 2020 Acrylic on Canvas 20"x10"
• The Little Cahaba at Bibb Glades Preserve, Early May 2022 Watercolor & gouache 12"x9"