Amy Genser’s love affair with paper began in a paper-making class at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she received a master’s degree in Graphic Design. Using paper as a pigment, she constructs her pieces by layering, cutting, rolling, and combining paper. Through the use of paper and paint, her pieces explore texture, pattern, and color – and how all these ingredients happily mix together.
Evocative of natural forms and organic processes, her work is simultaneously irregular and ordered, with her pieces bringing to mind aerial landscape views, satellite imagery, and biological cellular processes. “It is perfectly imperfect,” she explained in an interview with Zoneone Arts. “I love all kinds of organic processes. They are visually intriguing and engaging.”
Indeed, the natural world is a clear source of inspiration for Genser’s work, which admits she is fascinated by the flow of water, the shape of beehives, and the organic irregularity of plants, flowers, rock formations, barnacles, moss, and seaweed.
“We spend a lot of our summers on the beach in Rhode Island,” she says. “I love watching the water, the rocks, and the light. Our beach has rocks with these really neat barnacles and seaweed. Their colors are always changing. Sometimes there’s a lot of it, and sometimes just a little. It’s neat to watch the progression. One day when the seaweed was purple, brown, yellow and green, my husband made the awesome observation that nature never clashes. I love that.”
Take a look at some of her observations, as she translates them into paper:
