Amy Hughes Braden uses painting to talk about things that she has trouble talking about. She says that she is concerned with the “density of painting”; how “it is the good way to be angry” and also “worldly.” Her paintings are visual, visceral platforms for a mash up of influences including feminism, personal history, current events, and art historical imagery. Partial figures or environments, words, thick and thin paint, and loud color appear often. Braden cuts pieces out of her paintings and stacks multiple paintings so that some parts are visible and other parts are covered. The paintings can be shifted and rearranged. Pieces of other paintings are attached to new paintings. They are assemblage in nature and suggest mutable states. Because the holes expose the stretcher bars (the skeleton of the painting), the paintings take on a risky violent character. The wall or scene behind the painting seeps in, strangely warping space, and challenging traditional classical concerns with creating an illusion. Braden’s paintings exist in a tipsy position as an incomplete thought or body that fluxes between repair and ruin.

Amy Hughes Braden is an artist based in Washington, D.C. She recently traveled to Rome with through the non-profit Transformer, as a part of DC’s Sister Cities grant program. In 2015 she participated in Transformer’s Exercises for Emerging Artists program (E12), in collaboration with the Design Studio for Social Intervention from Boston. She created a social lab which explored what it means to be a feminist, and the resulting piece “Mrs. Alex Braden” was then exhibited at The Katzen Center. Braden shows work regularly in the DC/Baltimore area in both DIY and commercial spaces, as well as nationally. In 2014, Civilian Art Projects presented her solo exhibition, “Are You Gonna Eat That?” Braden is a current member of the art subscription service, Project Dispatch, a past member of the DCAC supported collective, Sparkplug 4, and a graduate of the Corcoran College of Art and Design.  Her work was recently exhibited at School 33 in Baltimore, in a show curated by Cynthia Connolly. Beginning in January 2017 Amy will be the Artist-in-Residence at the Cafritz Foundation Arts Center at Montgomery College.