A Brief History of Me

So I went to the studio and made a start.

I am not satisfied just yet, but it is a good start. I find half the work of painting is done in my head; thinking about color combination's, gesture, and the back fat to bottom ratio. All of which I was working on today during a slightly dull meeting. I am not sure yet what to do next with this painting, so I thought best to do nothing for fear of buggering it up, was nothing. so I did other things today, non art related things. None of which will entertain you in the slightest.

One thing I did do today was write back to an old boyfriend who has recently returned from living abroad. I knew him while I was in school in Cambridge and he was studding medicine at the university there. He knows nothing of what I have been up to in the last 10 years so I did a brief history of me, which I thought you might be interest in:

After Central St Martin’s I ran away to sunny California. I ended up running a dude ranch just under the “D” in Hollywood. Sunset Ranch


I lived in a little house on the ranch in the park, surrounded by horses, chickens, peacocks and coyotes that kept jumping on my roof at night and keeping me up.

This is a bit of a tangent but there was this one time, my mum was staying with me on the ranch. She is horribly allergic to horses, so spent the whole time high on Sudafed. Anyway, she comes knocking on my door in the middle of the night

“Amy” she whispered in her long mumsy nightgown that only the over 50s and those in period dramas can wear, “there’s a Police man at the door”

“No there’s not mum, go back to bed” so she tiptoed back to her room.

Then a very official Bang Bang Bang at the door, I leaped up, pulled on pants and answered the little wooden door.

“ma’am, your horses have escaped and they are running down Hollywood Boulevard.”

“Bollocks they are!”

The Americans don’t count bollocks as a swear word so I try and use it as often as possible when talking with officials. Plus, if the horses had escaped, they would go up the hill to the wild brush and lush grasses and not to the bright lights and short skirts of downtown.

I was explaining this to the officer when a helicopter rose up from the canyon, its search light scanning the ranches sleeping chickens.

“Well can you count them and see if you are missing any?”

“there are 80 of them in that corral and it is dark and they are all moving around. And there’s another thirty in stalls up the hill.” I waited for him to say I didn’t have to do it.

“It’ll take a while and I probably won’t get an accurate count.” I said over my shoulder as a tromped up the cold hill.

I guess it was a slow crime night in Hollywood as the helicopter spent the night hovering about, shining its giant search light behind the bushes and trees of the stars houses for hiding horses.

Needless to say, as dawn broke 8 of the very adventurous horses came back down off the hill just in time for breakfast. They smelled like wild sage and were practically giggling.

Turns out some punks had broken in, opened the pens and shooed the horses out. They then called the cops and said they were galloping down Sunset Boulevard as a prank.

Running the ranch was a lot of fun, lots of great stories, but eventually; after about 4 years; I needed to move on.

I went back to London and decided not to do an MA in painting; I got a studio in a dodgy little part of east London and painted until I ran out of money.

Then I remembered that the UK was cold and wet and full of people who had frowns and said ‘no’ a lot. So I hopped on a plane and came back to Hollywood. I got a job working for a grumpy old man training animals for TV and Film.

Really, I trained a lot of pigs. They grow very quickly and production always wants a cute little one with a little pink piggy nose (they also have very sharp teeth).

I worked on quality features like “you don’t mess with the Zohan” and “Tropic Thunder”. Fart jokes and camels go hand in hand apparently. Although I did get a chance to work on Avatar, which everyone is always very impressed with.

I kept up with my painting all this time and I have a few galleries that show me.

Partly because art was going fairly well, although I would always like to sell more, and partly because I am pregnant (goodness gracious me, turns out I am terribly bad at contraception) and catching buffaloes and riding camels is not really appropriate behavior for a woman in my condition. I recently gave up the animal thing and went full time to painting. (I also do graphic designy things but that is far less interesting)

My husband is a film maker and we live just north of downtown with three chickens who lay eggs, two puppies who eat clothes, and a pot bellied pig called Nora who loves cake almost as much as I do.

This is an art film I made with my good friend and artist Ann Hadlock



amy at bernays.net
www.bernays.net