Amy Faggard is always chasing a challenge. The Nederland-based artist paints realistic images that aim to evoke a feeling in the viewer — a sense of place, of memory. She said she doesn’t think her work falls into the category of hyper-realism, but that’s not for a want of trying.
“I’ve always wanted to get to that level,” she said. “It’s almost as if you could jump into that scene and sit under that tree and read a book or you could feel the wind blowing. Or you could pick up the object and touch it and feel it in your mind’s eye.
“I’ve always really been fascinated by that fact. I thought, ‘Wow, I wish I could do that.’ I don’t think I’m there yet.”
Looking at the highly-detailed work in Faggard’s exhibition “Chasing Realism,” on display at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas’ Café Arts through Feb. 4, one would think she is a lot closer than she gives herself credit for.
Faggard said some people think realistic painting is just a question of copying whatever is in front of them, but Faggard said it takes a lot of work.
“You’re going to take a flat surface and you’re putting paint, trying to create three-dimensional subject matter,” she said. “It is just like anything else, writing music or anything else. They just see the romantic, lovely quality at the end. They don’t know that you reworked and reworked and repainted, took something out, threw it away.”
Faggard said she works for weeks on each painting. The large painting of a blue vase took three months. She will work on up to three paintings at a time, but more than three and one will get lost in the shuffle, she said.
Several of the paintings in the show feature lace draped over a dresser. The detail is such that one feels like they can reach out and pick it up. The lace is a progression from an initial series where Faggard sought to capture the subtle creases in fabric. Once she had mastered that, she challenged herself to go the next step.
“After I did a few solid color fabric (paintings) with the folds and all that, I was thinking, ‘Wow, it’d be pretty neat if I could paint lace fabric in a still life,” she said. “And I was thinking to myself, ‘You can’t do that.’ And then I felt, ‘Hey, if you don’t try you’re never going to see if you can do it.’”
Faggard bought three pieces of lace to experiment with. The paintings in the show are all the same piece, after she found the others had too much tulle. The one she chose had more detail. She sets up the still lifes in her home studio and takes photographs from multiple angles, loading them onto her computer before choosing the best composition.
“Of course, there’s stuff I still have to edit out because there was a candle on the dresser and there was a clock on the dresser — and people don’t even have clocks anymore,” she said, laughing.
The image is then drawn on the canvas, and she edits and adapts as she goes.
After mastering the technique to render lace, Faggard is now exploring fabrics with lots of details and colors. She is always chasing a more complicated challenge.
“It’s like, ‘Oh, I can do this. Let me try something even harder,’ or they’re equally hard,” she said.
Faggard said her husband, Albert, who is also a painter and educator, says she has a lot of patience.
“Maybe I have a lot of patience in that area because if you love to do it, you want it to be correct and look right,” she said. “I don’t think there’s a correct or incorrect way. You want it to look the way you want it to look.”
It isn’t a question of patience, Faggard said, it’s simply her passion.
“I can’t stop. It’s like what you have to do. It’s like you can’t control it,” she said. “I’ve thought about what if you were deserted on a desert island and you had no art supplies or anything? You’d probably started drawing in the sand.
“What if you were somewhere and you couldn’t have access to supplies? Well, that would be a horrible existence.”
The objects in the still lifes evoke a variety of feelings, Faggard said.
“I hope that it conjures up good memories,” she said. “Whatever you’re viewing, whether you like it or don’t like it, it can bring up some good memories or not so good memories, actually. Just like music would bring back a feeling or a memory. I hope there might be like, ‘Oh, I don’t like that because I remember spilling something on grandmother’s tablecloth,’ or ‘I remember this beautiful party dress I had.’”
Faggard will keep “Chasing Realism” because it is just her nature, she said.
“I’ve tried to move away from realism and then I always find myself right back on that path,” she said. “You got to be who you are, you know? You can’t try to be somebody else; you can only be you.”
A free reception for “Chasing Realism” will be held 2 to 4 p.m., Jan 21.
AMSET is located at 500 Main St. in Beaumont. For more, visit amset.org.
