Hasta La Ideas

Amy Wright is an illustrator, textile designer and painter based in Melbourne, Australia. If she hadn’t discovered her love and talent of image-making, she likely would have become a botanist. Flowers and foliage are the driving inspiration of her work.

“My Grandmother was a very skilled botanical watercolour painter, from whom I earned a lot from as a child… I grew up between UK and Australia, so much time was spent exploring English countryside and English plant life. Back in Australia, I was taught by Yolande Calkoen—a wonderful elderly dutch artist who studied once upon a time at the Bauhaus. She was as an inspiration, and her major influence was the way she taught me to ‘look through’ something to see what is happening on the other side, rather than just’ looking at’ it. From that 3d understanding I moved into Sculpture at the Victorian College of Arts, in Melbourne, before jumping ship and moving over to Textile Design, which was a perfect fit for me as it allowed me to be a painter and illustrator while giving a medium to create a product.”

Amy current image-making investigates plant forms, both real and imagined. “I have been drawing ‘true to life’ plants from life for as long as I can remember,” she says. “As a challenge, I have taken away the life subjects and stepped into an imaginatively driven interpretation of what I understand of plant forms.” Her intention is to highlight the art of botanical illustration in a contemporary environment.

“The ideas of John Wyndhams ‘Day of the Triffids‘ is a major influence, as the concept of plants ‘taking over the world’ fascinates me. For when everything else dies away and no longer exists, the plants (in some form) remain.”

Amy and her partner Jess, a bespoke shoemaker, have a company called Woot n’ Wright. They create leather satchels with prints, and other leather products such as bound notebooks, soft homewares such as cushions, stretched printed canvas frames and teatowels. “[Jess] is a whiz with leather, and I do all the printed artwork (taking it from original design work, through to physically printing with silk screens) All our product is 100% Melbourne Made, by us in our studio.”