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.