Amy Gattie

My work begins in response — first to water, and later to the images it offers. I collect photographs by paying close attention to the subtle patterns, movements, and shifts that emerge in natural bodies of water. In the studio, I work intuitively, composing from those source images to create painterly abstractions that invite stillness and reflection.

Trained in European and American art history, I’m especially drawn to the evolution of painting — its capacity to hold both clarity and ambiguity, structure and surrender. My photography borrows from that lineage. It embraces repetition and variation, the quiet rigor of the grid, and the contemplative quality of minimal abstraction. From Agnes Martin’s quiet grids to Simone Weil’s ethics of attentiveness, my influences are rooted in an aesthetic of care — a belief that looking itself can be an act of reverence.

In a world saturated with excess, I want my work to feel like a visual respite: a place to pause, consider, and breathe. The square format, often used in my compositions, offers balance and containment — a soft structure within which something alive can unfold. I’m always looking for that moment when a pattern holds, but also breaks. To me, that’s a reflection of what it mea...

MFA- California College of the Arts, Bay Area
Studio Art Center International, Florence, Italy
BA- University of Wisconsin- Madison, Art History and Literature

I'm also an internationally screened, award winning documentary filmmaker.