Amandah Louise – An Australian artist, working primarily with acrylic and charcoal to paint and to draw scapes and characters of the Coorong.Born in South Australia, I recently returned home to live and to work in the iconic Coorong, an...
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Amandah
Louise – An Australian artist, working primarily with acrylic and charcoal to
paint and to draw scapes and characters of the Coorong.
Born in South
Australia, I recently returned home to live and to work in the iconic Coorong, an exquisite and culturally rich and complex location. Here,
you can’t help but be inspired.
I was 19
years old when I happened on a Leon Pericles exhibition. It was in Perth, and right
then and there I decided that I wanted to paint pictures. But, like many of us
I got distracted. Bar jobs and retail employ, boys and babies later, at 28 I
had another chance at it, a Bachelor of
visual communication from Deakin University, then what followed were years,
agonizing years, me pursuing a visual language that I could call my own, trying
to create something original, something that the world had never seen. I wanted
to be the female version of Brett Whiteley! Who didn’t! Of course, what we see
and read and encounter informs our process, and I literally ran through the Louvre
when I had the opportunity to visit, devoured art magazines…. So much looking,
so much obsessing….
Today I’m simply delighted to just turn up at
the easel and to create. I don’t feel the need to be original anymore and that
has set me free. I guess that maturity grants us some wisdom. “There is nothing new under the sun” fits for
me, for now.
Today, I’m immersing
myself in this place and enjoying the work that is emerging. Because I spent
more than 15 years as a remedial massage therapist, it is almost impossible to
not see figures in my work, characters from stories, both past and present, but
too, the landscape here is impressing upon me.
Currently dividing my time between freelance
painting, graphic illustration and landscape gardening, I’m increasingly
enjoying the tension of allowing Abstract figuration and surrealism to push through the narrative type landscapes that are
the focus. For now, it has to be about the stories.