La Luz de Jesus Gallery is pleased to present Bathers Buskers and Cats, a solo exhibition by Amy Crehore on view from November 1 – December 1, 2019.

Amy Crehore represents the female mystique the way a filmmaker, comic book illustrator or novelist would. Influenced by the old painting masters and guided by her intuition, Crehore composes her imaginary characters in environments that reflect her own persona. For her solo exhibition, Bathers, Buskers, and Cats, Crehore has chosen charming motifs that she loves– cats, plants, vintage string instruments, an old Harvard amp, buskers, bathers, bubbles, a pierrot, etc. Crehore explains, “Matisse reminds me of the importance of color and pattern. Balthus reminds me to use dynamic angles when posing my imaginary figures and to be sure to have cats lurking around. The Italian metaphysical and magic realist painters such as De Chirico and Donghi are sometimes watching over me as I paint.”

Artist Amy Crehore was born in Virginia in 1953. She grew up in PA and NJ, in suburban towns on the train line to NYC. She attended VCU School of the Arts in Richmond, VA earning a BFA in Communications Arts and Design. While working at various publishers after college she taught herself to paint, which ultimately lead to creating illustrations for many top American magazines and doing fine art shows with museums and galleries. Early in her career, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, as well as the Portland Art Museum (OR), exhibited her work. She had a few solo shows in Richmond, VA, but by the mid-eighties, she had relocated to Oregon and in 1991, Playboy and Esquire were the first of many big magazines to hire her for illustration jobs. Amy Crehore continued illustrating for a couple of decades, winning national awards. During this time, she also played 1920s music with her husband at Northwest festivals and Ken Kesey’s events. In the last 15 years, Amy Crehore has exhibited with many galleries from L.A. to NYC. Recently, she has shown her work internationally with Jiro Miura Gallery of Tokyo, Japan and Antonio Colombo Gallery of Milan, Italy.