NYAB Event - Vanida Amiot “The Persistence of Color”

Vanida Amiot “The Persistence of Color”

Agora Gallery

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Vanida Amiot’s ethereal abstract paintings turn texture into content. Amiot builds her work with a painstaking technique, layering areas of color in an ever-changing whirlpool of hues. Brushstrokes — dabbed, feathered, drawn out, and a million other varieties — are their own assertive presence. Each piece is a sum of a thousand delicate strands. Though not explicitly three-dimensional, the work nevertheless demands that the eye probe beneath the surface and supply endings to shapes half-hidden under one another.
The artist’s other great tool is color. Like the strokes that comprise a texture, each hue is a subject itself. They are combined according to mood, with a pensive painting including several tints of the same shade and a tumultuous painting featuring angry color clashes.
In these works, light and dark are employed strategically, to create both negative space and a respite for the eye. Every work explores the emotional effects of color modulation, though it is often quite subtle. The skeleton of the painting, and its fundamental composition, derives from this aspect. The artist counts among her influences Realism, Surrealism, Fauvism, Cubism, and Pop art. Somewhere in the cacophony of differing color theories she has found her own voice, at once contemporary and informed by her knowledge of art tradition.
Amiot has described her process as the paint “capturing my emotions and describing to me what to do.” Though her forms are completely non-representational, she sparks the imagination with her titles. Works are often named for something wholly specific, yet conceptual, adding to the intriguing nature of the piece. Mystery is a pictoral element just as crucial as color or texture. With her shape-shifting work, Amiot asks us whether our eyes can be trusted.
Vanida Amiot was born in Pondicherry, India but was adopted by a French family and had the good fortune to inherit two major cultural influences: French and Indian. She paints in acrylic.