Meet Amy Ward | Artist || Art Educator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Amy Ward and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Amy, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
There’s this Anais Nin quote that hits home for me every time: “And the Day Came When the Risk to Remain Tight in a Bud Was More Painful Than the Risk It Took to Blossom.” I’m sort of a risk averse person – I teach in public schools and appreciate that I have insurance and a regular pay check – but then again, whitewater and skiing are huge parts of my life. They’ve taught me over and over again that the process of embracing fear and coming out on the other side of it – is the thing that makes one feel THE MOST alive. There is no bravery without the presence of fear. The two just always simultaneously exist. I think about bravery and courage in my art making, in my sporting life, in my business, in relationships and in my classroom. I want my students to feel safe to take risks in my classroom – because taking risks, making mistakes, doing those things that are hard and require courage is the absolute best way to grow.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
What Sets Me Apart – visceral paint focused beginnings that slow into secondary layers of finely detailed inky line work. the magic is in the tension between the layers. in the relationships. Also, I profoundly believe in the collective. The tiny drops in the bucket that all add up to a beautiful intricate whole. This manifests in my work in many different ways: sometimes collections of marks, or layers, sometimes many many small paintings, or responses from multiple individuals.

My Proudest Accomplishment – Expecting: The Motherhood Project. 2022’s installation of 45 6″x6″ watercolor paintings, each in response to a separate interviewee’s answer to this question: “What have been the most unexpected parts of the journey with and through fertility, pregnancy, and motherhood?” We covered abortion, adoption, miscarriage, lesbian pregnancy, infertility, wonderful pregnancies, horrible pregnancies … I was terrified at first to put this work out there. To say – “I’m not a mom, and I feel left out, what is it like?” To discuss the unexpected feelings I was so confused about having and felt alone in. But when I started to explore it, every artist I talked to got emotional at the thought of this body of work. They repeatedly said, “Yes. Yes Amy, you must bring this into the world.” And it turned out to be another case of taking the risk and reaping great reward in terms of personal growth and connection with others through art. Turns out that every woman has struggles around fertility or pregnancy or motherhood – it’s this essential part of womanhood, so integral to the human experience, in which every woman feels alone at some point, because we keep the most important things most private. It’s so backwards.

Lessons – Japanese artist Hokusai (creator of The Great Wave) is known to have said he would be a marvelous artist at the age of 100, but that nothing he’d done before the age of 70 was worth bothering with. … I went to art school as an undergrad because I wanted to be an artist. I never wanted to teach really. I genuinely love kids, and there is much about teaching young artists that is incredibly beautiful. I can’t paint like a 1st grader no matter how hard I try. They possess this unfettered joy of mark-making that’s inimitable and inspiring. I love the idea of elevating kid art to museum status. The idea of honoring their lines and their colors with high quality materials and large sizes and professional level presentation. But If I’m not making enough of my own work outside of the classroom, I get jealous that they’re getting to create and I’m having to do all the behind the scenes work to facilitate the experience, without feeling the real joy of the whole process myself. Because I grumble about the teaching so much, it’s humbling to admit that years of teaching art has made me a better artist because I have to draw every day, I have to think about breaking the process down for others, to understand and solidify basic skills in order to teach them. It’s a daily back and forth – the wanting to appreciate all that teaching is giving me and the wanting of more. More time in the flow state of making my own work, saying things only I can say with that voice that is solely mine.

I started an Etsy shop in 2008. It sold Nothing. For years. Absolutely nothing. I kept drawing, painting, did a couple of 100 day projects and started sharing my work consistently on Instagram. THEN, I took a class in 2020 called Making Art Work with Emily Jeffords that really made a big difference for me as an artist/entrepreneur. It’s the business class for artists that they don’t offer in art school, and the community she’s created is beautiful too. Emily says, “Progress is quiet and slow.” It’s so comforting and so so true. Slowly, I’m growing into the business side of being an artist, as my artist self matures too. Maybe by the time I’m 80, I’ll have reached some kind of zen state, where the struggle has quieted, has reached an equilibrium where I realize the struggle has been the great journey. And then by the time I’m 100, I’ll be an artist who’s able to create things the way I actually visualize them in my head.

It’s a fine line to walk between being able to pay the bills and making the work that feels real and true and brings people together. But we’re walking it. Learning every day. I wouldn’t want to live any other path and I’m truly looking forward to see where it all goes next.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Ahh! ok – so since you have to eat every day, let’s just start with food. For a Gluten Free/Paleo-ish kind of day in Denver proper, Just Be Kitchen, Olive and Finch, Maci Cafe or Larry’s Bagels are musts.

Denver Museum of Art, Confluence Park and all the murals on that walk along the South Platte are awesome. My favorite gallery downtown is Space Gallery – they show the most beautiful contemporary work. And if you can snag a studio visit with local painter Noelle Phares, that’s definitely on the agenda too.

But then I’d head out of Denver to Golden for lunch at Windy Saddle Cafe or Bob’s Atomic Burgers. If it’s summer, there’s great whitewater kayaking at the play park on Clear Creek in Golden where you make big moves on small water to prep for expedition trips out west. I take my bestest friends rafting out of Salida or Kremmling, depending where the water’s flowing. If it’s winter, we head for skiing at Loveland Ski Resort – where the locals go. Cabin Creek Brewing has a killer gluten free pizza in Georgetown on the way back to town. And I since live in Idaho Springs, when we’re here we eat all Eggs Benedicts at The Main Street, the green chili and a GF brownie at The Clear Creek Cidery and everything on the menu at West Bound and Down.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Nantahala Outdoor Center Nantahala River, Bryson City, NC/Pigeon River, Hartford, TN

The NOC was built by and is still creating whitewater legends. They’re incredible. Six seasons raft guiding for the NOC helped me learn to be scared and do it anyway. That it’s not the entire end of the world to flip the raft and dump all your passengers overboard. That your body is capable of more than you think it is. That your mind is too. You are only limited by your imagination, by your mental capacity to imagine success – and if you look where you want to go (instead of at the horrifyingly huge undercut rock or the boat eating hole) and keep your cool and paddle hard, you can learn to get there.

There’s so much more mental depth to high adventure sports than the language of shredding gnar and nailing the most epic send suggests. The people are there to help you. If you let them. If you seek them out and invite them in. If you open yourself up to entering the terrifying places. This mental shift has carried me all kinds of places previously unimaginable, including into entrepreneurship as an artist.

Website: www.amyeward.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amy.e.ward/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amy.e.ward.art/

Image Credits
Amy E Ward, Suzie Broderick, J.D. Blackwell