Amanda Gantner: North Shore Studio’s Artist of the Month

In March of 2012, The Arts of Life community welcomed a maker in her late twenties named Amanda Gantner. Amanda was curious and willing to experiment with a wide variety of mediums. Her early work included abstract acrylic paintings that implied architecture, layered oil pastel pieces reminiscent of landscapes, and jagged colored pencil drawings with areas of saturation and negative space. She also combined mediums and used masking/tracing techniques to achieve more representational outcomes.Amanda’s openness to new ideas and early experiments with various mediums laid the foundation for several artistic leaps later in her career.

In 2014, Amanda was introduced to a photo transfer technique that she incorporated into many of her paintings and drawing for several years, in an effort to make her work even more representational. In 2016, she began using chalk pastel to render vibrant, dreamy sunsets and soft animal portraits. The series was the subject of a solo exhibition in Evanston, IL. At the end of 2017, Amanda made another leap and began creating celestially-inspired Pollock-style paintings which slowly grew in size and palette. Several of these kinetic, exciting new works are currently on display in our Café Gallery for Amanda’s Artist of the Month exhibition.

Curatorial committee member Cole Fox interviewed Amanda Gantner to find out more about her and her creative practice. Here are some highlights from their conversation:

Cole Fox: What is your favorite subject matter?

Amanda Gantner: Ireland, in oil pastel.

CF: Your new “Jackson Pollock” style of art is cool. What do you like most about it?

AG: The shapes.

CF: Its messy?

AG: Very messy. I don’t care!!

CF: Is it good messy?

AG: Yes!

CF: What made you want to come to the studio?

AG: It’s fun here. All my friends.

CF: I agree. Do you enjoy your time here?

AG: yea!

CF: What do you like to do when you are not at the studio?

AG: Nothing, be a bum!

CF: What do you do to do nothing?

AG: I enjoy. Drink Pepsi. Eat candy.

CF: If you weren’t an artist, what would you want to do? What is your dream job?

AG: I like animals. A veterinarian.

CF: My sister wants to be a vet. I love animals too. Is there anything you’d like for people to know about you?

AG: I am very beautiful. Blue eyes.

CF: That’s very true.

Congrats to Amanda Gantner for being recognized as Artist of the Month! To learn more about Amanda Gantner, check out her ARTIST PAGE and the gallery below.