Amanda Seibæk
I am Amanda Seibæk and I am a painter and printmaker, born and raised in Copenhagen, Denmark. I grew up in the suburbs of Copenhagen and went to a Steiner School, a school where aesthetics, grace, and beauty are key priorities. As part of the Steiner philosophy, you have to play an instrument so I began playing cello at 10-11 years-old and I loved it. Alongside Steiner School I went to an art school in the centre of Copenhagen from age 8 – 21. You cannot attend if you are older than 21, so I knew I then had to pursue art school.
My practice centres on themes inspired by scientific explanations of natural phenomena. This I use as a tool to describe turmoil in contemporary life though a more poetic lens. The theme can be used as a force to ask questions, to stretch facts into fiction, and to visualize inner emotions. I am inspired by Maggie Nelsons autotheorical works, connecting multiple fields of knowledge, never deeming any irrelevant for her explorations.
Materially, I connect the mediums of painting and print. I see colours in layers and with colours I shape my figures. When connecting print and paint I try to develop a language where print is not locked, but rather freed by the brush as a playful tool to make sense of something intuitive. My images exist in 3 mediums; digital, paint and print. The mediums inspire each other. The screen's reflectiveness inspires the choice of canvas and the layers in print. The imprint of the prints on the canvas orchestrates the compositions on the final painting which I conduct with my brush. Through this material investigation, I analyse the close relationship between emotion and motion to create images which provoke a response in my spectators.
· Recent work?
My most recent work is called plum season. The idea stems from the comparison between plums’ blossom and decay and the trajectory of romantic relationships. When starting out, the naivety, hopes, and dreams rule your thoughts, however these are not sustainable emotions, dreams fade. Reality eventually becomes explicit, and most relationships crumble. Similarly, plums on a tree start out as gentle petals and the bees tend to the early beginnings. As they grow, the anticipation of pinks and purples bleed across the ripening fruit; the warm sun feeds the sugars. Once the perfect deep purple is achieved, the august sun arrives to the sight of rotting fruits. The fertility and richness sinks into the soil, having fallen off the arms of the tree. The plum season has an end, as is the natural course of any season. Walking under a plum tree is a daring thing, your feet land heavily on the soft fruits and the drunken bees drift chaotically.
The rise and decay are reflected in the painting through the colours, and as the season develops the contrasts of the palette will become more visible. The figure in the paintings will always be reaching out, at the end only to grasp onto the hope that once existed. I am very inspired by natural phenomena and gazing at my parent's plum tree in Copenhagen became an obsession I had to turn into a series of paintings.
