"Kinfolk China: Dear Amanda, it was such a pleasure to have this opportunity to be invited at the opening of ‘Indigo Skyline’, your first solo exhibition in Europe at Galerie Marguo. A dozen of your latest works presented in this exhibition were painted I believe during the pandemic. How did the pandemic affect your artistic creation? What’s a typical day like in your studio in Queens?
Amanda Baldwin: Yes, all the work was completed during the pandemic. Luckily my studio is located a couple blocks from my apartment so I am able to walk there everyday with my dog instead of having to take the subway. I usually go in everyday day and just get started right away and work from about 9am – 7pm. I want to start to get into the habit of meditating in the morning before I start working. I tried that for a period of time and it was a really nice way to start the day, but it’s hard to dedicate that time especially when I feel under pressure or have a deadline…but those are the times I need it the most!
Kinfolk China: During my research of your creation, I had a look at your Instagram, and it seems that your earlier works were closer to abstraction. Later on, your attention shifted towards still life. Where lies your passion for still life?
Amanda Baldwin: I love abstract art and yes I initially began with making abstract paintings. However, at the time I was making them I felt that all my ideas already existed out in the world. I didn’t feel like I was adding anything new. I then took a turn and started making the still life work and my hope was that as I continued creating them I would gradually be able to find a way to incorporate representation with abstraction somehow. I didn’t really know what that entailed or how it would look, but I knew that was important to me. Jumping off from the still lives are the landscapes and I feel like there is a lot of room in them for me to develop new and exciting ideas. This notion of representing the world we know and see everyday, but breaking down that familiarity by introducing new identities is what excites me and keeps me challenged at the same time.
Kinfolk China: I have also noticed that in your previous works, objects of daily life, even figures on some occasions, are placed within an indoor environment indicated by colored patterns. In those paintings, the visual game of blending objects with background reminds me of Henri Matisse and David Hockney. However, in your recent still life paintings exhibited in Paris at Galerie Marguo, the background setting became simplified and almost monochromatic. What’s your intention behind this evolution?
Amanda Baldwin: I did have a series of works with figures in them, but I realized that I wanted the inanimate objects to take front and center and become characters in their own right. I love Matisse and Hockney and was really interested for a long time in exploring blending objects with the background, pushing foreground and background relationships. With the work in ‘Indigo Skyline’ I wanted the elements I painted in these works to be the main focus. Not only did the backgrounds become more simplified and monochromatic like you said, but especially in the landscapes the backgrounds became almost non existent. The mountains and trees take up the entire canvas and climb their way to the top leaving only a small sliver of sky in most cases.
Kinfolk China: On the other hand, landscape seems to be a new ground of venture for you. How did this series start? And where does your inspiration come from?
Amanda Baldwin: I have been thinking about the landscapes for a long time it just took me awhile to figure out how I wanted to compose them. A lot of the inspiration comes from the art I was introduced to as a child. My dad was born and raised in Japan and came to the US to go to college. My parents house is filled with beautiful furniture and artwork that they brought back with them. I especially loved the landscape woodblock prints. The scenery would encompass the entire print, perspective was completely skewed, and they were filled with bright, bold colors that popped. I found it so smart to create depth without volume per se but using pattern and altered perspectives to achieve it instead.
Kinfolk China: Your passion towards still life and landscape also remind me of Paul Cezanne. It’s interesting how through the exploration of these two genres, deemed minor by the Académie, Cezanne pushed painting into modernity. What’s your view on the potential and the place of still life and landscape paintings in contemporary art?
Amanda Baldwin: Generally contemporary painting seems to predominately exist of abstract paintings or, if in the representational realm, figurative art. I think it’s in my nature to want to rebel somewhat from the norm. I want to make work that I feel adds to a new narrative. Although landscape and still life painting are as old as mark making, I also appreciate all the different decades and art movements throughout history and love that it is always changing…it’s interesting to think what landscape painting will look like 50 years from now.
Kinfolk China: In your landscapes, I love the layering of natural and geometric elements, as well as the harmonious juxtaposition of nuanced shapes and colors. I wonder if they each represents something different, maybe a state of mind, a season, emotions?
Amanda Baldwin: I like the idea that they can symbolize a season or emotion…but the thinking behind it is related to order within nature. Rock, plant, and water, for example can all produce rhythms that are defined by singular mathematical theorems. Stripes on a melon, striations on a leaf, and a series of mountain peaks tell a universal story as much as define their own space on the canvas. These elements exist at the micro level, such as a flower in a single bouquet, on up to the macro mountain range found within a landscape all sharing some sort of universal mathematical origin.
Kinfolk China: I read that you usually paint several canvases at the same time. How does it work and what are the benefits of such creative process? Especially when you paint in series.
Amanda Baldwin: Throughout the process of making a painting I usually always reach a point that I get stuck, it tends to happen roughly at the half way point. When this happens I find it works for me to step back for a little and put my attention elsewhere. If I didn’t do this, I would just keep working through and potentially make the wrong decisions. Setting my attention on a different painting allows me to release the tension I had in the previous painting and gives me the freedom to come back when the inspiration hits me on what needs to change or evolve. I also work with a combination of acrylic paint and oil paint. Oil paint can take awhile to dry completely, especially in the winter, so I like to come back to things once they are dry and add layers. Some elements in my paintings have up to 10 layers that took many months to dry.
Kinfolk China: In your paintings with flower bouquet in a vase in this exhibition, I see a strong reference to the Japanese arts of flower arrangement and paper folding. You were born in Seattle, but you have also lived in Japan with your parents for some time. Can you elaborate a bit more about your connection with Japan and the influence of your oversea experience and Japanese art had on your own creation?
Amanda Baldwin: I was actually just in Japan for a summer in-between high school visiting my uncle who is a peace activist and was working in Hiroshima at the time with various programs to defund nuclear weapons. I have since been back multiple times and my cousin currently lives in Tokyo, so I hope to visit him there at some point. I appreciate the detail and attention that is put into the creation of things there…such as the food, clothing, and landscape. There’s this sense that when you eat something, the portion and the way it is presented to you has been thought about, cared for and it shows in the product. There are so many things in the US that seem put together is a rushed way. Of course Japan is not exempt from that but I feel there is far less of it there.
Kinfolk China: Melon has a constant presence in your paintings throughout the years, why the obsession? What is its symbolic meaning?
Amanda Baldwin: There is a lot going on in the landscapes between all the different elements involved and it can be difficult to take in all of the textures and various mark making going on in them unless you are seeing them in person and can get up close. With the melons, there are less objects involved, so the textures I use to create them can come forward more and it’s more apparent. They are very much studies on texture and I keep painting them because every time there is a slight shift that take place regarding the texture and allows me to explore that. They are also a bit more physical in the process of making them. The melons are made using acrylic paint and I apply a layer on paint to them, unstretch the canvas, place against a wall and then sand down the layer of paint slightly so that portions of the paint is removed and the weave of the canvas can come forward a bit, creating.
Kinfolk China: When looking closer at your still life, I noticed that the shapes and forms of some flowers or melons are organ-like, which adds a sensual touch to the image. Is this a conscious choice / approach? This aspect also reminds me of Georgia O’Keeffe, who is an inspiration for you. Could you name some other female artists who had important influence on you?
Amanda Baldwin: Yeah I have noticed that as well and been told that they take on an anthropomorphic quality. I don’t go into the paintings with that as an intention, per se, but I do see that in them once they are completed. I think that happens naturally when I take an element like a melon that is a familiar shape and texture, but alter it in various ways…maybe it gives it a human like characteristic.
Kinfolk China: On Instagram, you interact a lot with Loie Hollowell, another aspiring young female artist. Do you feel a sense of community between women artists nowadays? Do you think that the talents of female artists are being well recognized among institutions and galleries?
Amanda Baldwin: Yes, Loie and I went to grad school together at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. She’s been an inspiration for me since the day I met her. She works really hard and it’s been so wonderful to see her practice evolve and expand since grad school. I do think women are being recognized more and more by galleries and institutions. We all know that was not the case until now, and there is a long way to go, but I am so extremely thankful to be living in a time that increased recognition is taking place.
Kinfolk China: Lastly, for your art, which direction are you going in the future?
Amanda Baldwin: I see myself working through the landscapes for a long time. I feel like there is still so much for me to explore and unpack within them. I think that is part of the reason I decided to start making them in the first place…I knew that they would be a constant and ever evolving theme for me to investigate and expand on. I need to be challenged in the studio with whatever it is I am making and the landscapes definitely do that for me. "
