Amy Sillman

Amy Sillman
Born	1955 Detroit, Michigan, United States
Nationality	American
Education	School of Visual Arts (1979)
Known for	Painting

Amy Sillman (born 1955) is an American painter. Her artistic practice also includes drawings, cartoons, collage, iPhone video, and zines. She lives with her dog Omar in Brooklyn, where she also maintains a studio. Sillman is Co-chair, Painting at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College.

Amy Sillman was born in Detroit, Michigan. Prior to graduating from Manhattan's School of Visual Arts in 1979, she held a wide variety of jobs, including working in a cannery in Alaska, a feminist silkscreen factory in Chicago, and training at New York University as a Japanese interpreter for the United Nations. While a student at the School of Visual Arts, Sillman worked with May Stevens, Joan Snyder, Pat Steir, Louise Fishman, and Harmony Hammond on Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics.

Sillman began studying and working in painting in the mid 1970s. Her influences include the New York School (art), Abstract expressionism, and Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston in particular. Sillman does not consider herself an Abstract Expressionist, stating, "I wanted to learn about both Abstract Expressionism and the critique of easel painting—not because I wanted to emulate them, but because I didn’t like them."

Sillman's work is both abstract and representational, incorporating elements such as figuration, collage, and diagrammatic shapes. In a 2006 Artforum article, Jan Avgikos wrote that Sillman’s paintings “mine the edges of abstraction, meshing patches of color with bursts of chaotic line and web-like compositional scaffolding.” Her layered works often include humor, visual jokes, cartoons, psychological elements, and feminist critique.

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