Bio

Amanda C. Sweet received a BFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2007 and an MFA in Painting + Drawing from the University of Washington in 2015. Prior to her graduation from RISD, Amanda studied Visual Arts at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, 3D design and drawing at Winthrop University, and printmaking at the Pont Aven School of Contemporary Art in Brittany, France, with founder Caroline Boyle-Turner. She has lived and worked in Providence, RI, Brooklyn, NY, Asheville, NC, and Seattle, WA. 

Studio Practice

In the numerous layers of paint—fundamental to the gradual process through which her striking, abstract works arrive—Amanda C. Sweet sees the local Northwest currents in twilight hues, swirling and building on the canvas. Each uniquely controlled application of sprayed water-based paint encourages surprise forms and suggestive new depths to come into view, as the artist waits to capture the elements in perfect balance. 

 Her series draw inspiration from encounters with nature in tidepools, where a typically unseen, microscopic world churns with vibrant life and activity. Often vivid colors, emotive gestures, and disorienting spatial relationships are presented on square canvases, and sometimes exaggerated—a reminder of nature’s extreme dynamics on display in tidal miniature. 

 Sweet’s practice incorporates traditional masking techniques and modern tools as well as those of her own design. In Waxing Moon, reorienting the canvases became key to finding their most satisfying state, and in some cases, allowed diptychs to form between previously unrelated pieces. By welcoming such chance developments to inform the works as their gradients form, she achieves outcomes which feel deeply personal yet connected to an organic continuum familiar to us all.

Fugue in Blue

June 2019 Solo Exhibition at Shift Gallery | Click here to read the entire review “Sound of the Sea”, by Shift Artist Peggy Murphy (excerpt below)

“With Low Tide 1 and High Tide 1, color becomes more diverse, the grid becomes less perceptible, and a sense of freedom occurs as if a conclusion is drawn. It is in these works, as well as the larger canvases, that her process yields a true sense of tidal motion. Unexpected hues fill the large canvases, marks gain in scale and travel across the field. Depth and motion are present, and the sea and shoreline are palpable in these pieces. Much like the sea, there is a sense of contradiction–safe/threatening, tumultuous/calm, surface/depth.”