Lot 274 - Amanda Horwood - Real' Xmas 2024 Part 4

Gouache and acrylic on paper
2025
A6 (10x15cm)
Original Artwork
Signed on Verso
Curated by Art on a Postcard

About
I work relationally, alongside the painting to reach the final conclusion. That can take a long time or can happen very quickly. It depends on the struggle that occurs, how quickly the work resonates and is possible to find balance.

My use of colour, texture and mark-making helps me to build layers, and create areas that could be seen as ‘zones’. I manipulate the paints to indicate something. An example being that a character belongs in another realm, or is both ‘in and out’ of the ‘Real, and the Painting world’.

‘There, and not there’, is a continuing theme, along with loss and trauma.

The painting process has developed into a visual language for my storytelling. Aesthetic decisions becoming metaphors. I use memories from my personal history and sometimes present experiences. The content merges with what I see and read, familiar faces often surprise me in the paintings. I have unexpected visits from film and TV characters, themes from music and literature, which I have absorbed will magically appear.

Sometimes I lose characters, as their presence doesn’t benefit the composition anymore. That can be hard – but the painting will stop moving on, until I can bring myself to do it.

I’m not a spiritual person, but within my ‘Painting world’, there is an afterlife – a supernatural world beyond this one, parallel to the physical world. Spirits and angels interact with the living characters in my Painting world.

Education
1997-2000
BA Hons - Fine Art, Leeds Metropolitan University

2006-2007
Postgraduate Cert in Post Compulsory Education - Art and Design

2007-2008
Foundation - Art Psychotherapy, Goldsmiths

2024-2025
Correspondence Course, Turps Banana

Group Exhibitions
2024
God of Small Things, 54 The Gallery
Interconnections, Elms Window Gallery
Persephone Rising, 54 The Gallery
Salt and Stars, JM Gallery London
Murmuration, JM Gallery London
BIG, Tower Gallery
Chorus Arts Summer Show, Riverside Studios
Seven for a Secret, JM Gallery London
Schema, Elms Window Gallery
Drama and Confusion, Elms Window Gallery

2023
Tart Factory (Open Call), Design District
Into the Rose Garden, Elms Window Gallery
Chorus Arts Launch, Riverside Studios

2021
Winter Exhibition, Three Colt Gallery
Two Little Ducks, Elms Window Gallery

Gallery Representation
2022-2023
The Hook Gallery, London

2023-2024
Tart Gallery, London

Statement about AOAP Submitted Artwork
These are a collection of small works painted in gouache and acrylic. The scenes depict a mixture of real and imaginary moments from Christmas 2024.