Amy Runyen

Amy Runyen is a contemporary painter who uses a collage aesthetic to create new anthropomorphic creatures from botanical and animal parts. Her works explore human emotions and behaviors through her perception of the animal kingdom and the natural world. She grew up in a rural area in east county San Diego, riding horses daily and spending a lot of time with various pets. These early connections to animals and nature fostered and interest and empathy for them that influences her work today. Amy’s fine artwork has been shown in galleries domestically and internationally. She has written and illustrated ten art educational books for Walter Foster Publishing and has been featured in Create! Magazine. In the Pomona Arts Colony, she collaborated on the Envisioning the Future mural in association with Judy Chicago. She earned her BFA in illustration from Savannah College of Art and Design and her MFA in drawing and painting from California State University, Long Beach. She is a full-time professor of art at Golden West College. She lives and works in South Pasadena, CA.

The content of my work is driven by a desire to analyze and depict my emotions in a rational manner. Blending human, animal, and botanical parts is a way for me to compare behaviors between our species and others, much like artists have been doing for millennia. Creating work that addresses the commonalties our species shares with most of the other living beings on earth are my way to contextualize and understand behaviors to empathize with all living species. Shifting naturalistic colors to my subjective preferences personalizes and reconceptualizes my relationship to the subjects. Exploring hybrid constructions of humans and the natural world allows me to investigate underlying, universal themes like love, fear, desire, and anger. Becoming a mother myself has currently focused my interest on the shared experiences of all parents, human and animal alike.