Amanda Karakas | Wish You Were Here

Artist Statement

Amanda Karakas’s subject matter is nature, and almost entirely landscapes, whether they be formal gardens or the Australian bush, although occasionally she paints city/urban scenes as well, if they hold a strong emotional connection. Amanda is fascinated by the endless possibilities within a landscape; where each scene can be transformed into one of beauty and/or loneliness, depending on the time of day or season, and her own inner emotional landscape at the time. Amanda’s landscapes are devoid of humans, using familiar motifs such as trees to be the main protagonists, and she’ll often include jarring unsettling additions to heighten their dreamlike nature. While her paintings are based on real places at a real time, the choice of subject matter, use of colour and type of mark making reflect her emotions and thoughts, much like the expressionists, rather than be an accurate representation of the natural world.

Artist Bio

Amanda Karakas is a Melbourne-based artist who works mainly in oil paint and acrylics. Amanda has been painting with oils since 2019, training at Fitzroy Painting. She is also a part-time artist where her day job is teaching and doing research in astrophysics at Monash

University, having completed her PhD in Astrophysics in 2004. Her work takes her to many corners of the world, and these travels provide much of the inspiration for the paintings she creates.

Primarily a landscape artist, Amanda takes inspiration from the natural world to evoke an inner emotional landscape. Amanda's art explores the notion that landscapes are not static but shift and change, much like our emotions and mental states. Colour and texture within the paintings reflect a personal response: nature and the natural world can be both beautiful and lonely, or joyous and unsettling, depending on one’s emotional state.