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Amanda Makepeace

Artist's Interview

Amanda Makepeace on: Painting?: Painting is something I only started doing seriously in 2003. Before then I painted sporadically and was still intensely devoted to drawing. I have dozens of portraits, many of them self-portraits, that attest to that obsession with pencil and paper. What changed and made me turn to painting was probably a combination of several things. Regardless, of the catalyst once I picked up a paint brush I never looked back. The first series of paintings I worked on only totaled 3 and I called them the Blue Series. They were more of an experiment working in watercolor with only one color. From left to right they are, Blue Flames, Blue Peaks, and Blue Skies. Blue Peaks is still in my possession though it desperately needs to be re-stretched. The second series of paintings that I worked on are known as my Connections Series; which totaled 10 paintings. These were all watercolor on watercolor canvas. It was a new product at the time manufactured by Fredrix. I still love that canvas and have some stored away to use in the near future. The Connections paintings were my interpretation of brain neurons/synapses and the color of emotion. The painting pictured here is one of my favorites. Awakening was adopted by my Mother along with a sister painting and now hang here permanently. It's nice to be able to see them everyday since the other paintings in the series all went to good homes. The next series of paintings I focused on took me beyond our world. I call those paintings my Celestial series and sadly they were lost to me. There are two that do survive in homes somewhere in the UK. If I recall correctly there were over 15 paintings in this series, all of them were painted while I lived in London. Here is one of those:. After my flurry of watercolors on canvas I turned to painting in acrylics and to a very different subject, pebbles. The first pebble painting I ever did looks very different from the pebble paintings I create now. It still has some of the more vibrant colors of my earlier paintings infused into it. The first series of Earthscapes, as I like to call them, only totaled 7 paintings. I sold all of them but one which I stubbornly have claimed as my own! I would have never painted these if it were not for a dear friend, Dr. Russel Winder. Russel was writing a new edition of his book, Developing Java Software, and wanted me to paint something for the cover. It was the most exciting and painful experience and I'd do it again in a flash! That commission pushed me beyond my comfort zone and opened my artistic mind to new possibilities. I will be forever grateful to Russel for that and it was really cool being paid my Wiley and Sons. You can see the book and my painting on his website. I began my second series of Earthscapes after returning to the USA in early 2008. I am still working on them and other little projects here and there. Sometime this year (2009) I will be returning to watercolors and that vibrant color that first inspired me, but pebbles will always be in the picture.