Detail & Design… from A-Z
Pittsford Fine Art
4 N Main St.
May 2, 5:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Amy earned a BFA in Visual Communication Design with a concentration in Illustration from the University of Dayton, Ohio. This led to a career as a freelance illustrator, working with Rochester ad agencies on various commercial projects. After being approached by a friend to paint wildflowers on kitchen cabinets, she began a flourishing career as a mural artist, creating intricate hand-painted murals throughout the Rochester and Finger Lakes regions.

Today, Amy is semi-retired from mural work and serves as an advertising director for Fahy-Williams Publishing in Geneva. In her art studio at her home in Naples, she creates still lifes in oil. Though her canvases are smaller than the walls and ceilings of her past, a high level of detail remains her signature.

Amy is drawn to painting subjects that bear the patina of time, capturing intricate detail in rust, old metal, vintage typography, weathered wood and reflections on glass. Through these realistic portrayals, Amy evokes nostalgia through a collective human pictorial experience. Growing up in a generation bridging old-fashioned and modern technology, she’s particularly drawn to objects like typewriters, vintage cameras, books, and antiquated tools that represent both timelessness and obsolescence.

A unique aspect of Amy’s work is her lifelong love of the alphabet. She has designed illustrated alphabet letter cards in various themes which hang together to spell words or names. When creating still lifes, she often arranges items whose first initials are consecutive in the alphabet, such as “Quinine, Roses, Stars” (Q, R, S), “Knife, Lantern, Manual” (K, L, M) and “Shoes, Tissue paper” (S, T).

Meet Amy on First Friday, May 2, from 5 to 8 pm and see a sampling of her work displayed.

Her work can be found at Pittsford Fine Art’s website, as well as on her website at amywheelerartist.com.