Amy Bernays Paintings

A child's tantrum in simple childhood colours of pink and blue. It is taken from a snap in a classroom. The whirling dervish, what was in the origi...

I had this board, with the orange pattern, for ages in my studio. It is the perfect cerebral context for this portrait of siblings. I love the relationships. The composition so wonde...

The crazed days of childhood. I love her freedom, the play of paint. And just a few lines describes her bother. Every neon moment of childhood felt a little like this. :: Painting :...

The beach: sunscreen and pink; neon and salt. I remember the sweet bliss and blisters. The tacit experience, those few baby months I had with her before they grew and changed into di...

It looms, like a gate to the wild. Impossibly hot and dry, with lush orchards at its mouth. Gushing all that water, it quenches me after a long hot drive through the desert. :: Paint...

This is part of a series of painting I am doing in collaboration with my children. This time I asked her to draw on my painting of her. I was drawing a strident young woman with a sh...

The title is from the words written across the top by my daughter, aged 5. I used my sons sketch of a shark on top of my painting of a wind swept day at the beach. It is ag...

This one is more back and white. It’s about how we teach our children. Introduce them to powerful tools. We direct them to use it; have fun with it, don’t do harm with it. ::...

Somehow it is easier to overpopulate a little painting and get away with it that in a big canvas. This little painting is crowded with life. The menagerie is my daughter’s depiction of her world, the animals within it. It is blued together with the depiction of a small crowd of children looking at the precious thing. We can half make out their forms. Still a little undefined, as things are when you are only half grown up. I like to paint the happy in life. Looking for those thoughts or moments that bring me joy and define my life. I paint my children. Not just their visage, but their being. Their play, their imaginative world as well as their real world. In this series I have the kids paint...

Something in the composition about parenting. What do we steer our little ones toward? What is our guiding light? Our ideal selves? Who should they be in the future? This is painted on her magic landscape. Her sun and tree. Her metallic shimmer. Her little family, her bother and grandpa, looking out together. There is something hopeful and foreboding. A clear look toward the future. I like to paint the happy in life. Looking for those thoughts or moments that bring me joy and define my life. I paint my children. Not just their visage, but their being. Their play, their imaginative world as well as their real world. In this series I have the kids paint...

I love to peer into boyhood. Like an intrepid anthropologist, I pull back the curtains of imaginative play and look into their world of makeshift slingshots and make believe war. The ferocious bite of his dinosaurs, informed by playtime with a little friend and a pet chicken. I like to paint the happy in life. Looking for those thoughts or moments that bring me joy and define my life. I paint my children. Not just their visage, but their being. Their play, their imaginative world as well as their real world. In this series I have the kids paint...

I was raised a warrior, Here I am battling. The start of everything new, The end of everything past. I am clashing pinks and slim fitting dresses A birthday cake is the g...

From the series in collaboration with my children. She gets to make choices. She made a rainbow out of purples. Later wept when her Knight was taken, she hurt for the death of her ...

The kids snuck into my studio, this started as a painting they did of me. After homeschooling all spring, it is like I am their whole world. My unintentional features where the borde...

This painting was easy. The kids snuck into my studio. I had prepared some yellow canvases and they had a giggle painting this series of messy splashes. The image that I painted over...

a little tipping the scales I think. The instincts of little boys and politicians alike :: Painting :: Contemporary :: This piece comes with an official certificate of authenticity s...

It is something between the bird in the house and the soaring kite. I little understand this painting. I like the play and cooperation; the compositional pull between my siblings and...

What a complicated world. I remember looking at parents with fear and loathing. Hate and fear for the fullness of their days; their need for rules and regulations. The sharp clear cu...

I got to use her own image as the ground. She drew on the canvas first. A girl, not her, just a formula that she has seen from online art class. The eyes are the same, the formula of...

Such a beautiful day, such joy to gallop along the beach. I love the dry of sand mimicked by the dry of the canvas. The wave seeping into the sand and drying away with the rhythm of...

She likes to make makes before the zoom sessions on computer home school. She also likes to paint her face and sometimes turn the camera off. What is this homeschool doing? The use...

(on hold for exhibition, The Next Big Thing at Studio Channel Islands 8/6/22) I love this collaboration. They are so lucky to have each other. I love to hear them talk when they d...

With is a duet with my daughter, she has been in computer homeschool for a year because of the pandemic. She likes to make makes before the zoom sessions on computer home school. She...

In collaboration with my daughter who is 8. I spend so much of my day thinking about how to raise a children, how to make them and mold them into good little people. I think this wo...

This is part of a collaboration with my kids. It started in lock down when I had no choice. They draw on my canvases and inhabit my every day. I listen to their pretend and play. The...

We have learned so much this lost corona virus year. She has grown strong and the flowers look sweeter and more vibrant. :: Painting :: Contemporary :: This piece comes with an of...

I loved making this. Remembering my little girl when she was a baby. That baby blue, the pink flesh, I relish in my nostalgia. :: Painting :: Fine Art :: This piece comes with an ...

Just to breath To think To be To open up the door on this life This time This city I watch her naivety as she crashes like a little ship in a storm This is the...

Something in the dynamic of play. They joy of the mask and the learning how to take turns. A coveted ticket to peer into another world. :: Painting :: Fine Art :: This piece comes...

We have nature on our doorstep, wilderness just a few blocks away. This city is beautiful. :: Painting :: Fine Art :: This piece comes with an official certificate of authenticity si...

An allegory of growing up. Scrambling towards womanhood. :: Painting :: Fine Art :: This piece comes with an official certificate of authenticity signed by the artist :: Ready to Ha...

A lot of my work is about parenting. A lot of parenting is about knowing where to put and enforce boundaries. I like the metaphor in this scene. It is a portrait of family...

The wilderness defends itself. First like a siren on the rocks, it draws us in with beauty; the swaying grasses look smooth and soft and inviting. But their seed heads burrow into ...

Something in the green emotions. Greed and Envy. I took this pose from social media. Something in the self protecting stance and yet she’s naked and exposed. :: Painting :: Fine...

This painting is the memory of childhood, from as close as I could get. This is two generations of a summer day. In the pre world, before there were all the structures that ...

Such is the joy of motherhood; like an astronomer watching the birth of stars; I see my daughter woven into the fabric of her world. As my daughter grows through a stage I can now...

I was thinking about the structure of play, the structure of war, the structure of our society. This started as a painting by my son of jets fighting, a dog fight...

For those who know, you can instantly recognize the hill behind them. so HOLLYWOOD Mostly itΓÇÖs about the arch of the horses neck and the journey the rider...

For those who know, you can instantly recognize the hill behind them. so HOLLYWOOD Mostly itΓÇÖs about the arch of the horses neck and the journey the rider...

A portrait of relationships, perhaps a homage to the family dynamic. Grounded in the pink boots; guarded by Blue. The cat isnΓÇÖt part of the source photo. ...

Such a contemporizeing element, the girl in the mask. The unescapable nod to our pandemic life now. This is part of a series I do in duet with my children. It is her drawing of the b...

This is part of a series of work I do in duet with my children’s paintings. My process with painting is to ruminate on life. Childhood is both the present, and the ghosts; I see memories of my own childhood. I want to inhabit their strong imaginations, bursting into our experience. Blurring the line between real and imaginary. This is my little girl and her dragon. Her work is more about texture and form than his. Even though it is his subject, the feminine is throughout. I love being her mum...

I love the beach. The endless horizon of no plans and timeless reality. All there is, dragons, moats, sand castles and the sea. This is part of a series of paintings of motherh...

This is part of a series of work I do in duet with my children’s paintings. My process with painting is to ruminate on life. Childhood is both the present, but and the ghosts. I se...

So much joy and love in one cake. I just wanted to relish the treasure that is loving them. Its warm and pink and happy. :: Painting :: Fine Art :: This piece comes with an official ...

This is a portrait of family life. The fullness of imagination within.I start a painting with colored ground, a full tummy and good working pens. It is priming for my children to scr...

It is a double edged sward. A coin with two sides. My son spends his homeschool days busying his hands making sculptures out of cardboard. It was cars and planes, now its always guns. It breaks my heart but it is his creativity and I am divided in my feelings. Spending 6 hours in front of a computer when you are 10, I understand his need to do something with his hands. I would need to if I were in his shoes. So I provide ample cardboard and inspiration, glue guns and rubber bands. Perhaps he makes cardboard guns as an object of power. Like the cave people painting the pray they wanted to capture, he makes something that would give him power. My daughter has unicorns. She has the lyrics to her song. She has sitting still and behaving well and writing and reading as her power. In todays world, perhaps the female sex...

This is the duet of my children’s painting and mine. This submarine has been rocking about my studio for too long. It’s bomb is her, she flings a stone out into the river. The...

I saw these youngsters at a roping in Bakersfeild. I see my son look up to them. He wants to be them, the older boys. I really recognize that admiration of the bigger boy; the powerf...

I like it most when I am ruminating on beautiful days but this is something I have to see. I love that he is so creative, I wish it was in making rainbows and unicorns. :: Painting...

This is the love of summer. The memories of childhood. The learning of values. The course and diversion of water. A contemplation on the lessons learned on hot summer days. :: Pa...

What is he thinking, what are they thinking? How do you make sense of the world through arms? How foreign this minds is that was made from me? :: Painting :: Fine Art :: This piece...

I keep thinking of puberty. Of growing up. Of family and knowledge. This work you have to think also about the back of it. It is 20 years in the making, as are my children. :: Pai...

It started as a drawing of war, and tanks, and fighters, and accompanied with the bombs and shooting noises. My son plays in drawing. He creates a world, populates it with characte...

This is Rules and Regulations. I enjoy his play and humor while also contemplating the human condition of childhood. I am to perfect the skill is in setting up the framework that th...

This is a Hollywood cowboy. Again I have the children paint on prepared canvases. We are plagued with helicopters buzzing the hills, carrying tourists looking at the Hollywood sign a...

This is a metaphor. It is pieces of other paintings I have done. The rocks are closeups of the rivers and streams on Dartmoor where is spent my childhood. The deck and the house, the...

I love to wonder as deeply as they do in play. The world comes alive with the possibilities that you put out there. In my children’s play, one will announce a reality; “we are fl...

It was an epiphany, It was at a time when I was changing who I would be. The church was also the preschool my children were going to; staring at that wall marked the start of my thre...

This is acrylic on canvas board with mixed media. It is a sweet tale of a day. :: Painting :: Contemporary :: This piece comes with an official certificate of authenticity signed by...