The Paintings of Amanda Blake: Dipping Into Our Shared Past

'Charlotte and Her Imaginary Friend'

AMANDA BLAKE is a Portland, Oregon-based painter whose otherworldly visions of children and adults are at once full of wonder and inherently grounded.  You feel like you might be able to walk into the worlds she paints, you might know the people—but what would you find when you arrived?  Her work mixes mysterious and normal in a way that felt very special to the sisters of TSP.

Amanda (who after this gallery was posted was chosen as an Etsy featured seller) paints primarily in oil on wood panels, using narrative, symbolism and figure to explore the emotional connection formed between viewer and art.  Her sources of inspiration range from found photographs to vintage children’s literature.  Amanda grew up in a family of artists (including both her mother, a ceramist, and sister, a photographer and illustrator), and there has been rich inspiration in that experience, too.

The idea of sisterhood is important to her art, she says, “in that it speaks to this idea of a common past, which I draw heavily upon in my search for subject matter.” She wants it to feel familiar, and not just to those who know her.

Amanda on mom's lap; sister far right.

Amanda’s images are familiar because “we all have those old family photos around that are so much a part of my imagery,” she says, but it goes further.  “The entire idea of a sister—of someone you have a shared past with—speaks to my use of symbolism and superstition and the idea that we all, everyone on the planet, have a shared deeper past.”

THE TSP INTERVIEW WITH AMANDA BLAKE

Amanda Blake.

“I have to say I truly struggle with getting into words my ideas about my art,” says Amanda, but TSP doesn’t think so. Listen for yourself:

Q.  You know you’re a sister when…

A. “You can’t discern if a memory happened to you or your sister.”

Q.  Best of/worst of experience with your sister (whether biological or “sister-friends”).

A. “The best has been seeing how much my son adores my sister.

“The worst would be when my sister created a fake Christmas wish-list from me for my grandmother, an entire Christmas worth of toys that I didn’t want, absolutely heartbreaking as an 8-year-old, but pretty funny now.”

Q. Are there pop-culture or other cultural references that make you think of your sister?

'Three Girls at Night'

A. “We grew up in the late 70’s/’80’s, so there were countless hours spent watching MTV from the very first video, sitting in a packed theater watching Sixteen Candles, my intense jealousy at not being old enough to go to an Adam Ant concert with her.”

Q. What does the word ’sister’ mean to you?

A. “Sister in a larger sense of friends or biological is the moment where despite so many differences you can see a commonality, a shared experience of the world.  Sisterhood is a time when you see something they do or hear something they say and it is something you have or wish you had in you.”

Q.  What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned from your sister experience?

A. “The most valuable lesson I associate with my sister would be one that I learned with her, not from her.  My mother is an artist as well, and took my sister and me with her to craft shows. Growing up with my sister in that community of my mother and all the other women artists and their children showed me how I could live off of art and not sacrifice the joy of having my children with me.”

A GALLERY OF AMANDA’S WORK

Amanda Blake earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Oregon in 2000; studied watercolor in Siena, Italy, and oil painting and printmaking at the Chautauqua Institute in New York.  She shows her work in galleries and at art festivals across the country as well as online, where you can visit her website, or her Etsy shop, named This Is All I Know. We doubt there’s a sister who wouldn’t covet a piece of Amanda’s expression of collective memory.

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