Amanda Scott fights for her perspective on the world
Though her earlier career as a dental hygienist surely contributes to Amanda Scott’s vivid smile, the passion she feels toward her current one adds energy and enthusiasm to it.
She’s been interested in art since her senior year at Farragut High School, but it wasn’t until 2019 that she began pursuing it seriously. That’s when she connected with plein air painter Kathie Odom as her art mentor.
“She taught me how to study landscapes and to see the colors underneath, really how to study the world around me,” Amanda says. “A couple of years later our family started traveling more, and I had my first taste of seeing great art in New York and in Europe. I learned how eclectic each work is; everybody gets to have a voice.”
Vincent Van Gogh’s work in particular stirred her creatively, and she studied it intensively. She realized it was his use of strong outlines around images that attracted her. The technique is called cloissonnism, and she employed it in a series of 11 oil paintings of fruit trees that are on exhibit at District Gallery.
Amanda believes art is a way for people to connect. Working with the immigrant community in an English Language Learning program at Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church, she says that sharing postcards of paintings has been a way to relate to the group.
“Seeing art through someone else’s eyes gives value and dignity to each of our perspectives. There’s something about beauty; we can find common ground.”
Amanda has hearing capability only in one ear and lost the vision in one eye after battling a non-cancerous eye tumor in recent years. But she doesn’t feel hindered by being “differently abled.”
“Being hearing impaired made me more of an observer, a more curious person,” she says. “I’m a little more curious, boisterous, passionate because I’m fighting to see the world around me. I think it makes me a good artist. I don’t take vision for granted.”
Amanda participated in the Knoxville Museum of Art’s Artists on Location plein air event in April, and has shown work at the Emporium Center and the Makers Exchange. You can follow her art at amandascottartstudio.com.
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