Today we’d like to introduce you to Abstract Artist, Amy Spingola. She Shares the Origins of Her Company ∆CF∆.
Hi Amy, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I would be remiss not to start my story with my parents, who amongst many other things, encouraged my artistic expression and boundless imagination, taught me to be a knowledge seeker, and raised me in an environment rich with art, music, and culture, all of which has contributed to who I am today.
Over the years, my love for creating has been a constant, playing various roles in my life: therapist, friend, teacher, just to name a few. Creating art and being creative has always been a way of life for me, not just an activity or area of study, but it took me some time to figure out what that meant for me.
I was brought up in a highly active family, so you could say my experience playing competitive sports is extensive. But as one travel ball season blended into the next, I began to realize that although fun times, learning and growth were had, ultimately, I viewed these activities as commitments, rather than an outlet, or a means to understand my place in the world. Whether I was drawing, painting, manipulating materials or experimenting with color, art was many things for me, but never “work”. In true introvert form, I was never loud or proud about my innate love of art, and constantly doubted my abilities, but I continued to take classes in school, and despite the formality, it remained my escape, my relaxation, my fun, and ultimately my driving force.
As high school ended, so did my long journey playing competitive sports, and I felt compelled to focus my collegiate studies in graphic design and the arts! Fast forward 4 years, I earned my undergrad degree from The University of Alabama and faced a deep depression in the aftermath of the Tuscaloosa-Birmingham tornado tragedy. Comprehending the fragility of life is a different journey for everyone. I chose to cope and ponder unanswered questions through painting.
Since college, I’ve been living and working in the metro-Atlanta area, selling my paintings on my website and at local art festivals.
I did not want the financial pressure to paint in a certain way, so I’ve always found it helpful to keep a “day job”, ensuring that I only make decisions for the sake of the art, and not the business. In my mind, this is how true, visceral art is made. Additionally, I started to realize that an “art is life” mentality could take me further if I truly let it bleed into all areas of my life, allowing me to use my creativity in even the most mundane parts of human existence.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
As I briefly mentioned, depression and mental illness surfaced towards the end of my senior year in college, making my journey quite rocky there for some time. But thankfully, I had the family support and resources to get the help I needed to flip my weaknesses and turn them into strengths. In addition to getting the help I needed, I never stopped creating. Some of my work from that period was very dark but pulling the darkness out of my head and onto the paper, or canvas, seemed to heal my psyche and give me a great sense of relief.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My medium is mostly oil paint, but I have always been fascinated with the push-pull relationship between nature and technology, so I also like to juxtapose actual objects like dried flowers, mirrors and antique clock parts as texture directly on the canvas.
Taking cues from greats such as Basquiat and Frankenthaler, I paint what I feel rather than what I see. So, although my style is unique, I tend to identify as an abstract expressionist painter.
My current body of work explores the relationship between Time and Space. It was around the time of the government shutdown during the 2020 pandemic, that I took to researching concepts like time travel, portals and multiple dimensions beyond our visible reality. It’s also important to note that music and film greatly influence the ebb and flow of my craft. Preferring to paint while listening to music, from Broadway to the Grateful Dead, the music never stops, giving a tangible movement to all my paintings. It’s also common for an old film to be looping on another device, in the background of my studio. Line work and gestures indicating films being played backwards, can be found throughout my work, illustrating my obsession with replaying film and music from a young age, when VHS Tapes and Cassette Tapes needed to be physically re-winded.
I use these vehicles as my own way to time travel, embedding the feelings that surface, into the layers of paint, in an ultimate attempt to better understand myself and the essence of the human condition.
I would say I’m best known for my holistic approach to creating art and my unique style of painting human emotion.
I think I’m most proud that I’ve embraced my uniqueness in adult life, exuding a level of confidence I did not know was attainable as a younger person.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
The best thing about Atlanta is the diverse culture. I’m not sure if they still call it this, but when I first moved here, just before the ’96 Olympics, Atlanta was known as a big “Transplant City”, meaning many people were moving here from other areas of the country, as well as other countries. I found that even growing up in the suburbs of the city, there was a good mix of people with different backgrounds and experiences that helped enrich my young mind with more knowledge of the world.
I don’t like to dwell on the negative because it can send me on a downward spiral of depressive thoughts, but if I had to say something, I think my least favorite thing about the city, would be the handful of old-fashioned, close-minded residents who reject inclusivity and make it difficult for our city to progress.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.amyspingola.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amyspingola/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amychristinespingola/
- Twitter: https://x.com/amyspingola
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg0jum0p9qlK3Npn6bn_gMA
Image Credits
I took all of these photos. The first was taken with a tripod set-up & auto-timer, and some of the others are screenshots I’ve grabbed from process videos.
