Amy sketching at Thingvellir National Park in Iceland
Amy painting on Amorgos Island, Greece
Amy Perlman Gura
Finding Inspiration in Life and Death
I was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Maryland. I spent many hours in the DC art studio of my grandfather, Herman Perlman, and always loved art. After I survived a tragic car accident at age 12 that took my brother's life away, I found that both the making of art and learning about the natural world provided a source of healing from grief and unresolved questions that come from surviving death. Later, I pursued an Interdepartmental Degree in Art and Geography from the University of Delaware. I also studied scientific and botanical illustration after graduating, and used those skills to create customized illustrations to create illuminated manuscripts for Jewish wedding contracts, Ketubahs. I also spent years working in decorative painting and creating public and privately commissioned murals.
I took continuing studies at the Washington Studio School and Chautauqua Institution in landscape painting, and I found that painting plein air was a medium that brought my passions of art and nature together. This became my muse for exploring the world through art, nodding to my studies in art and geography. I love to sketch and paint outdoors in the elements with 360 degrees of information around me to capture an ephemeral moment, a sense of place, and witness the full cycle of life and death in this beautiful world.
Printmaking is another medium I deploy to interpret my plein air paintings into a more graphic form back in the studio. My happy place is carving a block, inking a plate, and printing by hand or press. I am an Affiliate at Discover Graphics Atelier, a printmaking studio located at the Torpedo Factory on the waterfront in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. I sell my art at gallery shows and art fairs in the DC area throughout the year.
I was recently selected as one of the Women Artist of the DMV, a multi-venue, regional curated survey of local women artists. Here is one of the several articles in the press, profiling me at the debut exhibition in Washington, DC.