My name is Amy Mfuni (formerly Amy Thompson) and I am an artist. I have been using charcoal as my primary medium since I first identified as an artist and while I will always love the medium; the messy freedom in provides me with and the ease with which I have come to manipulate it, I feel driven to branch out. I wrote the following artist statement before I left for my most recent adventure to Peru, however I am in the revision process as I feel it doesn't represent my need for genuine connection with people, for evolution as an artist or for travel. "In American culture we are often accustomed to sneak peeks at people rather than to really look at them. If a person is looking away, I will often take a longer glance at them. Only when I know someone intimately will I drink in their appearance with a long, forward gaze. I draw much creative inspiration from these types of social interactions. However when interacting with someone, one loses details in the environment because they are in the moment. My early charcoal work focused on large-scale reproductions of photos of people. While capturing every environmental detail, the photos also created a distance between the subject and myself. This allowed me to fully scrutinize someone’s features without subjecting them to an awkward stare. The large scale of these drawings forced the viewer to more intimately address the subject matter in the small photos. More recently I have sought to create this confrontation within a smaller canvas. For future work I intend to develop my technique for drawing candid moments from life, while maintaining the qualities I enjoy about drawing from photos. By drawing from life I plan to mimic the unobtrusive nature of a photograph snapped from afar. The final work will capture the details in the environment as a photo would, while drawing attention to my personal interpretation of the experience."