Today we’d like to introduce you to Amanda Prather.
Amanda, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
As a child, I was fascinated with bringing my hyperactive imagination to life. “Creating” a new world and bringing my imagination to life with imaginary friends & deeply elaborate pretend games was my absolute favorite past time as a child. That urge to create naturally manifested into hobby drawing–especially coloring– rather quickly, but would fluctuate into a variety of expressions over the years. Drawing was my preferred creative hobby throughout my teens in addition to bouts of acting, singing, sculpting, photography, and writing; I feel compelled to conceptualize and give visual form to my imaginations. More accurately, being able to translate the ideas in my mind and create them into visual form is my true fascination. While art remained a major hobby into my late teens, it wasn’t until my freshman year of college that I began to seek a formal education. At the time, I was in an entirely different major, yet still fixated on drawing. There was one instance where a professor pulled me aside and chided me for drawing during the entire lecture. So, naturally I threw gas on the flame and took a drawing class for my free elective. Before I knew it, I was ditching my major and switching to fine arts. Though it wasn’t part of my plan, I ended up taking more than a year off between, eventually working up the resolve to apply to a formal art school and complete my formal education. In 2011, I was accepted to Montserrat College of Art as a full time illustration student. At 21, I was a little older than the rest of the students, and uncertain of exactly what I was there to accomplish. But I knew one thing absolutely: art making was sustainable for me in terms of long-term education. Balancing academics with personal interest had been a consistent struggle for me– I knew if I was going to sustain 4 years of rigorous schooling, my focus had to be something I could lose myself in; that I genuinely loved and wanted to cultivate. Art school was an incredible experience, but definitely one of my most challenging undertakings. Some days I’m still boggled I was able to get through all the hours of craft development and coursework. I’m grateful for my time at Montserrat immensely as I truly feel I was able to harness my potential, focusing my vision to arrive at my current style and method. Developing my technique, style, and craft is a real adventure, and I am delighted now more than I have ever been to bring my colorful creations to life through my illustrations. Present day, I work as a freelance illustrator and graphic designer, developing my personal art brand and continuing to cultivate craft. Additionally, my creation urge took an unexpected turn in the form of bodybuilding: I am an NASM certified personal trainer and nutritionist, helping others create their best selves through training and dietary changes.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I feel I have always struggled with long term consistency. As a child, drawing was one of the few things that remained cornerstone while I jumped from interest to interest with abandon, looking for something that would “stick”. This is the main reason why choosing a major I already enjoyed was paramount to actually finishing my college career. After 4 years of rigorous art schooling, I was fresh out of college and determined to propel my art career forward by any means necessary… at least that’s what I fully intended. The reality is, I was exhausted. At the end of my senior year, I was spent, overworked, and emotionally cartwheeling over the uncertainty of my future. I produced a handful of paintings over the next year, sometimes disconnecting from art making entirely for months at a time. All the while, the urge to create still scratched at the corners of my mind, reminding me of my goals, my visions–my present, but weakened passion for art making, for bringing the conceptual to life. Nonetheless, while I still felt compelled to create, I couldn’t access the energy to manifest my imaginations into reality, nor that divine art flow mind-state allows you to truly get lost in the work; the act of painting; the act of creating. Professionally speaking, working for others still came with ease, but developing my personal work was an entirely different matter. While the worst of that disconnection period has passed, I am still struggling with the residue of that burnout today, though it has improved dramatically over the past year and continues to do so. Currently, I am able to draw and paint for enjoyment again for the first time in a few years, so the future is certainly looking bright!
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Personally, I specialize in juxtaposing the sickly and the sweet; the lovely and grotesque; the decadent and disgusting. My work typically comes off as attractive and decadent at a glance, but peer beyond the arresting color pallets and you might be unpleasantly–or pleasantly–surprised. Primarily, I work with gouache and Acryla gouache on illustration board or dense papers.
Point blank, I only paint what I love and what fascinates me. I don’t deliberately inject messages into my work, something I used to feel very self-conscious about, but have found peace with over the years. When I’m at my best, creating work is a joyful escape– almost meditative. I find immense pleasure in juxtaposing unlike things, transforming them into a confusing, yet alluring visual. Recently, I have discovered that–entirely by accident– my work clearly honors the multiple facets of my being and personality. In a way, painting what I do allows me to settle the dissonance within myself; to meld my opposing inner qualities fluidly; to find the breathe of synchronicity within chaos; it is the harmony of both my light and my darkness; my decadence and my destruction. Perhaps, my work is a subconscious manifestation of my inner landscape, a fusion of opposing, yet unified sides of my being, captured within emotive skulls and dripping ice cream.
Freelance and professionally, I work with clients to develop their personal visions and bring them to life through painting or digital designing. I’ve worked with clients to develop detailed painted illustrations and graphic projects such as logos, signage, business cards, and product packaging.
What were you like growing up?
Adopted as an infant from Ohio, I grew up under the southern heat of Georgia, running bare foot with abandon in the suburbs and drinking sweet tea. I was an adventurous and very imaginative child, full of potent anxious energy that translated into a lifelong struggle with insomnia and high functioning anxiety. Combine that with being the only child of two working parents– one of them a nurse working long hours– and you can bet I spent a lot of time alone entertaining myself with whatever piqued my interest at all hours of the day and night.
As I child, I was absolutely enthralled with written horror stories, voluntarily fueling my nightmares simply because the compulsion to learn and discover their terrors was uncontrollable. My imagination ran rampant because of this, making me a very fretful and phobic of the total darkness, even to this day. I have a very escapist mindset, making it easy for me to lose myself in elaborate day dreams or scenarios, and I believe that is a direct result from my fantastical tendencies to escape within my imagination as a child. My interests were diverse and many. While I very much appreciated pastel colored desserts, rainbows, and especially unicorns, I found equal allure in fantasy horror, occult rituals, and dark tales. “Bloody Mary” and werewolves fascinated me as much as Barbie’s Dream House and Lisa Frank stickers. Meanwhile, I’d come home after school and watch Xena Warrior Princess, Sailor Moon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer– my first examples of physically strong heroines that would eventually ignite my extensive studies in martial arts and bodybuilding.
As I got older, my interests didn’t really change all that much– I still obsessively read horror stories, escaping into fantastical worlds via video games, books, and movies. Unfortunately, food also became an escape. By the time I was in high school, I was obese, depressed, unhappy with my being, and confused as to how I felt about myself and the rest of the world. While I genuinely enjoyed my high school experience, it was an all-time low in terms of my mental health and my body image. If anything, the fact that I was so unhappy with myself heightened my escapist tenancies– I desperately wanted to distract myself from how I felt to living in my skin. At this time in my life, drawing was something that allowed me to feel good about myself. I could forget about how uncomfortable I felt, lose myself for hours in a drawing, and feel good about the end product. I suppose you could say drawing and creating has always been a means for me to make peace with my inner turmoil, if only for an hour or two.
Pricing:
- Original Art Prints (Various Sizes) $5.00-$18.00
- Original Paintings: $200.00 and up
- Design Work: $30.00 hourly or flat rate available
- Original Art Stickers: $5.00
Contact Info:
- Website: amandapratherstudio.com/featured/
- Phone: 617-751-9454
- Email: amandapratherstudio@gmail.com
- Instagram: amandapratherstudio
- Facebook: facebook.com/amandapratherstudio
- Other: etsy.com/shop/AmandaPratherStudio
Image Credit:
Eric Frazer
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