AMY ARCHINAL

A hard freeze settled over leafy New Orleans in the winter of 2010, a rare event that quickly became common conversation in the city – a topic as universal as the Saints’ Super Bowl win. By spring, the possibilities of an empty canvas of rich, peaty subtropical soil in the garden beckoned. For the first time since she arrived in New Orleans nearly 30 years ago, artist Amy Archinal got her hands dirty in the back yard. Choosing the plants to put in the garden, inspecting their daily growth, and marveling over their blooms inform her current paintings, voluptuous still lifes ripe with time. Here's datura, vibrant and strong trumpets of coral dripping from their stalks. Or butterfly ginger, white bursting with the strong, clear breath of new life.

Long known for her colorful and playful compositions that embrace the external landscape of her city and the internal landscape of her home, Archinal is as likely to place a paintbrush by a tulip as a nectarine alongside a ginger blossom. Her new works reflect the ease that comes with the time and wisdom of the painter’s maturity, and a deep presence imbued by her practice as a yoga teacher and Phoenix Rising yoga therapist. Life crests in her new work, intimate and inspiring and all but fragrant. “There’s just something about anything --a fruit, a flower, an experience – when it’s right at its peak,” she says. “It’s a rare moment of beauty and potential, but it’s also a little sad because you know it’s not going to remain. Perhaps, as an artist, my work is primarily a fascination with all that is ephemeral, expressed through paint.”

Widely shown throughout the South during her career, Archinal holds an MFA from UNO and has been a resident at the Millay Colony for the Arts in Austerlitz, NY. Her paintings reside in the following collections: the Federal Reserve Bank, National Institutes of Health, Health South, Media General, Lykes Brothers Shipping, EC May Corporation, and many other corporate and private collections. She received an early boost when her paintings were featured in the ground-breaking Steven Soderbergh film sex lies and videotape