i want to preface this post by talking about the blog a little bit. way back in 2009 when i first started blogging i was just sharing (often random) things i loved; and i still do, of course. but at some point the blogging world because serious business, and then we had to compete with platforms like Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram. blogs became about content creation and longform and all sorts of things that i felt, perhaps, pressured by. bloggers began hiring teams of people to keep their sites going and growing… something i’ve never done, and probably won’t ever do. i didn’t know where my blog fit in anymore, and i felt less likely to share small bits and pieces, or just funny random posts. i’ve come across so many things that i WANT to blog about, but i end up not sharing because maybe it’s just one image or it’s something so strange that i end up just tweeting about it.
i almost didn’t write this post about this compelling series of paintings by artist Emma Amos because i could only find these three pieces. but then i decided SCREW IT. 2009 Diana would share these! i want you, the reader, to be able to stop by and find something that diverts you for a few seconds or minutes in your day (or hours if you choose to scroll through the archives, ha!) i want to go back to the days where i am not overthinking what my blog should be, but rather what it always has been…
a compendium of radness.
Emma Amos is an artist originally from Atlanta, Georgia who has been painting and drawing since she was 6 years old. she’s 80 this year and still working!! i specifically wanted to share this series from 1966 because it really resonated with me, for whatever reason… maybe because it feels so relevant even today.
Amos is one of the last surviving members of Spiral, the short-lived, historically important African American artist collective co-founded by Romare Bearden in 1963. She was the group’s youngest and only female member. Emma, during the early to mid 60s, was working mainly on canvas with oils, very figurative work with references from abstract expressionism and from color field painting, in a way challenging this notion that these movements or techniques were only perpetuated by her white male counterparts. – culture type
you can see more of her work on her website and at Ryan Lee.
i love this piece too, which is some of her later work from the 80s.
* shout out to long-time readers who would recognise my old tagline!