BIOGRAPHY
In dreamy whimsical tones, evocative of the landscape as seen through a slumber’s daze, Amanda Tye captures Sydney’s landscape in oil on canvas. Based on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, she is inspired by the natural world as a way to escape and retreat from the busyness of everyday life—her works inspire us to be in the moment.
Tye studied Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales, graduating in 2000. She then went on to complete her Bachelor of Art Education and taught Visual Arts and photography for 15 years — all while practising her painting. In 2017, she left teaching to pursue a full-time career as an artist, and now has a studio surrounded by bushland.
By sectioning the view into shapes, Tye depicts an emotional yet fragmented response to her surroundings. The artist shares that 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. A juxtaposition develops in the artworks, amplified through our engagement with city life, especially one poised between the ocean and bush.
"...for me painting is about escapism and freedom; coupled with music, it is an obsession, a habit, returning each day to do better, to be better... striving to create that something I haven't yet, something more... something good enough... but without experiences fuelled by the magic of the natural and man made world, there wouldn't be anything to give" ~ Amanda Tye
Tye has been a finalist in The National Emerging Art Prize, ACB selects 2023, the Northern Beaches Art Prize 2021 Southern Buoy Landscape Prize 2020, Glover Art Prize 2019, The Fleurieu Art Prize 2018, Mosman Art Prize 2015, and twice 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 and is often used by interior designers for styling.
-Emma Kate Wilson