Amanda O’Bryan is an Australian artist & designer based in the Hunter Valley, NSW Australia.
Amanda studied Visual Arts and Design, both at the University of Newcastle, while more recently she trained at the Creative Education Foundation in New York state, USA.
She is twice a finalist in the Newcastle Emerging Artist Prize and winner of the 2018 Packers Prize. She was one of three artists in an Atelier with renowned Newcastle artist, John Morris in 2019 and successfully moved into the public realm with the ateliers ‘Willful’ exhibition in 2020.
After working in creative industries for over two decades as an award-winning designer, Amanda returned to the Hunter region after recovering from Ovarian Cancer. Currently, Amanda is participating in the 2021 Newcastle Art Space Mentorship program with Liz Annelli, an international award-winning watercolour illustrator as her mentor and working towards a solo show in April 2022 at the Owens Collective in Newcastle.
A fascination with florals, organic composition and the expressive spirit of nature is informed by her proximity to the surrounding rural regions and flower farms of the Hunter River where she lives. It provides witness to the ebb and flow of the seasons relating to the themes explored in the work, of change, growth and transformation.
Her original abstract artworks are energetic and expressive. The focus is on gestural mark-making in an attempt to describe the subconscious connection to the elemental spirit of nature. Painting onto raw canvas, the work is flooded with glazes and veils of paint. Layers bleed through the work, revealing the history and connection of the painting with the raw canvas. Colour is used as a compositional device, reinforcing the intersection between canvas and paint, while charcoal and pencil mark-making provide a directional visual map for the viewer, grounding the painting in the language of abstract expression.
Amanda uses eco-friendly, non-toxic, Australian made acrylic paint that pools and veins in stains and wash across raw canvas.