Larry Groff interviews painter Amy Mahnick about her work and process.

Mahnick comments: "If I don’t feel a real physical and emotional connection to the subjects I’m working with my painting is going to fail. And the act of painting itself is a communion of sorts rather than a detached observation for me. There’s a very direct, mutual dependency between the props and I, that’s established through my line of sight, where they become animated and reveal something through their contours and gestures etc. and in return give me something to respond to. The sculpture I’m painting now is a shell made of fragments and lined with pink felt that elicits an emotional response when I see it from a particular point of view. It has an immobilized energy that’s sad. It’s sort of writhing and arrested at the same time. But it only works from particular points of view. From others it’s nothing more than a pile of plastic and felt."