Amanda Harlow - Contemporary Artist
I am a visual artist based in Moscow, ID. My focus is primarily in figurative oil painting, but this practice often engages with installation, assemblage, textiles, poetry, mold making and casting.
My praxis is an unraveling of prescribed expectations to construct my own ideas of what it means to exist in this body. The development of my art practice has been influenced by letting go of restrictions I was once bound by. In that same notion, establishing my own boundaries in my art also feels like a kind of liberation.
I stage face-to-face interpersonal relationships that capture elements of movement, time, recognition, independence and intimacy. My practice meditates on the subjectivity of the individual construction of truth and reality, considering projections and inherited myths that inform our ways of being. I explore the influence of the interiorized male gaze and the enclosures of gender expectations by both embracing and confronting the performative nature of femininity. Through this lens, I emphasize the intricacies of adornment and the complexities of objectification through the convergence of abstraction, figuration and decoration.
I am interested in honoring people, memories, tradition, time and change by careful renderings of the figure that intersect with various creative impulses. I confront the vulnerabilities and nuances of existing inside female and gender-queer bodies. I aim to simulate a tangible interaction, reminding the audience of shared humanity. Compiling my efforts to engage with my own psyche, race and gender experience, I hope to reveal the relationship between living, seeing and making.
Education
2022
University of Idaho, BFA Studio Art, BS Art Education
Awards
2021-22
2021
Ken & Doreen Marshall Art Education Scholarship, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID
Banks Award for Poetry, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID
Exhibitions
Group
2022
2021
2020
2017
University of Idaho Ridenbaugh Gallery, Old Paths New Doors: BFA Exhibition, Moscow, ID
Anderson Ranch Art Center, Turnover, Snowmass Village, CO
Little Pink House Gallery, Renewal Summer, Genessee, ID (Invitational)
Third Street Gallery, Dear Moscow, Moscow, ID
Third Street Gallery, 2020 Palouse Plein Air, Moscow, ID
University of Idaho Ridenbaugh Gallery, Undergraduate Juried Exhibition,
Moscow, ID
Public Art
2021-22
Intermodal Transit Center Sculpture Garden, Moscow, ID
Professional Experience & Development
2022
2021-22
2021
2020
2019
Master Class: Painting the Figure through a Political & Radical Lens with David Antonio Cruz, Anderson Ranch Art Center, Snowmass Village, CO;
National Art Education Association Conference Participant, New York, NY
National Art Education Association Student Chapter President, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID
Summer Painting & Printmaking Intern, Anderson Ranch, Snowmass Village, CO
Instructor, Prichard Art Gallery After School Art Program, Moscow, ID
Figurative Painting with Patty Wickman, Anderson Ranch Art Center, Snowmass Village, CO
Contact Me
@harlowthehuman