Dec
14
2016

 

Artist Statement
 

I spent the first three years of my time at UNK in the biology department learning various formulas, chemicals, and scientific reasoning for why things are the way they are. Over time I realized that the scientific part of my mind has always been at odds with the artistic part of my soul. My art functions as a place where those two sentiments can culminate into something beautiful. For these reasons, my art deals with the elements of nature either working with or against man. When I make a piece of art it’s the idea of coming-to-be through nature that most interests me. Because I have studied the clinical side of man, I like to add non-traditional elements like vivid colors, textures, or expressive facial features to my figures or portraits. To me these features represent the beauty that is a byproduct of art and science working together.

This work also provides examples of the many ups and downs that I have experienced throughout my life thus far. There were times when I felt as chained to the world as the man that I drew sitting on a rock. Other times I felt as entangled as Boreas who tries so desperately to hold herself together in spite of an inexhaustible wind. However, what I like to think of myself as is the woman in Out of the Spring that uses one of the elements of nature that I fear the most (water) as a stepping stone into the ethereal. My art becomes Virgil guiding me to the upper most spheres of this life.

Amanda Thurston

Exhibition Statement

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