autumn means mice

MICE is this weekend! For new products, I have:

 Stickers!

 And "wild, gentle, painted" - a book of my favorite ladies from the past 5 years of lady portraits. I did a printing of ten and they are signed and numbered.

Other than that I'll have 8x10 prints, postcard packs, gift tags, tote bags, and a lot of my talented friends by my side.

MICE is held at University Hall at Lesley University (1815 Mass Ave in Porter Square, Cambridge) from 10-6 on Saturday and 11-4 on Sunday. Hope to see you there!!

xo, Amanda

in a basket of plastic animals

 This morning I found this plastic giraffe for $1.50 at Rodney's Bookstore, which is an amazing used and rare bookshop that sells a lot of strange, miscellaneous items and makes prints of vintage ads and posters. Also, they are named after a very handsome dog named Rodney who looked just like my old dog O'Malley. It's one of my favorite places to go; I always find something, and usually not what I was expecting to find.

Anyway, I was so excited when I saw this giraffe because it was as though he had stepped out of my most recent painting. While the coincidence isn't remarkable, it is the first time I've found an object that so closely resembled something I'd just painted since 2008.

Right after I finished "The Escapist," I found this red horse with my mom at Fairground Antiques in Keene, New Hampshire. This case did seem remarkable because while painting this particular piece, I had been enamored with the idea of a toy, plastic red horse. To find one upon completion of the painting felt somewhat extraordinary. Right after finding the horse, I found the biplane. 

These items, especially the horse, are special to me because that painting is very special to me - I made it in honor of Anne Frank, whose diary I read first at age 11 and have read several times since.

I hope you're all having a lovely weekend!

xo, Amanda

technicolor western

 "found gentle, studied slow"

acrylic on masonite, 11x14"

animals of africa

 "wild in my reverie, tame within your arms"

acrylic on masonite, 11x14"

This painting began visually (some begin with titles, others a feeling). An image appeared in my mind of a girl in emerald green with yellow hair, covered in wild animals of the African desert and jungle. Their colors are like jewel tones.

Today is the first day of school for our community! Happy back to school to all of you, and I hope you're having a lovely September. xo

the owl room.

This is a place I call The Owl Room. It's the top floor of an antique barn in New Hampshire. My mom and I find ourselves there about once a year. The thing that endears this room to me so is the fact that all of these owls - hundreds and hundreds of them - belonged to one woman. She collected them her whole life. Some are made of sea shells, some are hand-painted, some are manufactured. I walk around the room and look at each owl and wonder when she got it. Did she buy it for herself? Was it a gift? 

I wonder about her life. What possessed her to keep so many owls?

This piece from an essay Tennessee Williams wrote about his sister's collection of glass animals (which inspired The Glass Menagerie) always comes to mind:

"By poetic association they came to represent, in my memory, all the softest emotions that belong to recollection of things past. They stood for all the small and tender things that relieve the austere pattern of life and make it endurable to the sensitive."

I love visiting this owl room because it feels like a sacred space. There is a quiet comfort in the fact that these owls have been together for so long; they come as a unit. One by one they leave and go to new homes (I have a few), and this woman's collection lives on in the rooms of so many new people.