Amanda Beckman

I'm a self-taught artist. I draw, paint, learn, mess up, learn some more, and so the cycle continues.

As a visual artist, I don't consider writing to be a great strength of mine, so trying to articulate an artist's statement describing the meaning of my work and why I do what I do is no easy task. To put it simply, I paint because I need to. I find art to be compelling and consuming, and I couldn't give it up even if I wanted to. It keeps me balanced - well sort of.

Many of the paintings are a vibrant and big-eyed collaboration of people, nature and animals in a way that is meant to express the beauty in all living things.

The ideas behind my paintings come from nature, dreams, my daughter's wild imagination, and every day life. They bounce around in the background of my mind, constantly changing and evolving until I find the time to sit down and let them spill out onto paper and canvas.