Hy Amenero: Craft Lake City Artisan

Freelance illustrator Hy Amenero has long relied upon art as a process of introspection and vital expression. Art allowed them to “dive into their own humanity fearlessly and effectively.” Ever since discovering this powerful utility as a teenager and developing a potent expressive drive as a result, it’s clear that Amenero is the sort of artist for whom creative output is essential.

Many of Amenero’s works have a surrealistic and deathly quality—subjects include hollow-eyed, furry humanoids and the floating skeletal heads of birds of prey. Though these creatures have qualities from the fantasy realm, each is rendered with such a caring treatment of light and detail that they are surely manifestations of something very real. “I have a hard time expressing myself in any other way,” Amenero says, “I am such an emotional artist that I don’t tend to plan things out and immediately jump into creating.”

As a Peruvian artist now based in Utah, the merging of cultures is a first-hand experience that lives within Amenero’s work. “It’s important to me that I tell my story and show what the world looked like through my lens,” they say. Immigrating to a new country has fostered the empathetic realization within the artist that there is “more than one way to live life,” while the richness of Perú’s nature and culture also continues to inspire their work.

While out hiking with their pug Kubo, Amenero makes observations and takes photos of the natural world to use later as references. Ecological relationships seem to be a recurring theme in Amereno’s art, serving the work as both metaphorical representation and compositional structure. One graphite drawing depicts a bird and a serpent in an intimate entanglement of predator and prey. “I’ve personally learned from nature and how it balances itself and have tried to apply that to my own mind and way of living,” Amenero says.

Find prints, stickers and information about commissioned works on their Instagram @hyamenero_art. –Austin Beck-Doss