Artist Profile — Amanda Tye
“…Painting is about escapism, freedom, autonomy and gaining a sense of control over the world around me; coupled with music, it is an obsession, a habit, returning each day to do better, to be better... but without experiences fuelled by the magic of the natural and man-made world, there wouldn’t be anything to give.”
Amanda Tye graduated in 2000 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Sculpture Major) from the University of NSW. Following this, she worked as a portrait photographer and in advertising, but then went on to complete additional study — a Bachelor of Art Education. She taught visual arts and photography for 15 years, all while continuing her painting practice. In 2017, Tye left teaching to pursue a full-time career as an artist, and now works from her studio surrounded by bushland in Sydney, NSW.
In her distinctive painting practice, through sectioning the view into shapes, Tye depicts an emotional yet fragmented response to her surroundings. She is interested in a practice that swings between responding to the world as she experiences it, and a creative process that happens outside her conscious awareness. Juxtaposition develops in the artworks, amplified through our engagement with city life, especially one poised between the ocean and bush.
Tye has been a finalist in The National Emerging Art Prize, ACB selects 2023, the Northern Beaches Art Prize 2021, Mini Series Art Prize 2021, Southern Buoy Landscape Prize 2020, Glover Art Prize 2019, The Fleurieu Art Prize 2018, Mosman Art Prize 2015, and has twice been the winner of the People’s Choice Warringah Art Prize (Northern Beaches Art Prize). She has held solo shows at HAKE House of Art, Thienny Lee Gallery and Sydney Road Gallery. Tye’s work is held in collections across the world.
