# Amy Pleasant

amy pleasant (born 1972) is an American painter living and working in Birmingham, AL. == Biography == Pleasant received a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. Pleasant is best known for her figurative, free associative paintings and drawings that explore simple, daily acts in slowly unfolding narratives. In an article from Art in America, Max Henry wrote that her work “chronicles everyday life…full of existential angst and loneliness, her paintings are able to evoke an empathetic response from the viewer.” David Moos wrote of Pleasant’s work that through “fragments of overlapping narratives” the viewer is allowed to “glimpse the formation of images” and is “made aware of how the painter makes decisions in paint, amending a passage and visibly editing the composite image.” Martha Schwendener, art critic for The New York Times and critic of photography at the Yale School of Art, reviewed Pleasant's work in the contemporary art periodical Artforum, stating that Pleasant's paintings are “laid out in grids which collectively hint at angst-ridden narratives” which are stylistically reminiscent of “early Sue Williams paintings—the vitriolic feminist ones—or comics whose narrative core has disintegrated, leaving behind only the shame, fear, or desire that instigated them in the first place.” == Exhibitions == Pleasant has held solo exhibitions at Laney Contemporary (Savannah, GA), Institute 193 (Lexington, KY), Geary Contemporary (New York, NY), Indianapolis Contemporary (Indianapolis, IN), the Birmingham Museum of Art, The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center (Atlanta, GA), the Jeff Bailey Gallery, Rhodes College, The Ruby Green Center for Contemporary Art (Nashville, TN), and the University of Alabama, Birmingham.