Amanda Paulson Oil Paintings
Liberty: Statue of, 2008, oil on panel, 48" x 48" - Amanda Paulson

With the Barrington Art Fest just days away, we can’t let the week go by without meeting some of the artists who will have their works on display and for sale. But you don’t have to wait until this weekend to meet Barrington artist, Amanda Paulson. She’ll be the featured guest at an artist reception and wine tasting scheduled for TONIGHT. It’s happening at the Park Avenue Wine Bar in downtown Barrington, where her artwork is currently featured, including this 48″ x 48″ painting of the Statue of Liberty, priced at $1,595.

Amanda Paulson Oil Paintings
Liberty: Statue of, 2008, oil on panel, 48″ x 48″ – Amanda Paulson

Amanda is truly a local Barrington artist. She grew up here in Barrington, attended Countryside Elementary School, Station Middle School and graduated from Barrington High School in 2004.

After graduating from BHS, Amanda went on to attend the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and received a BFA in Painting in 2008. Amanda lives in Chicago now, but says having her art on display in her hometown means so much, because it’s the fine arts teachers in Barrington who encouraged her, early on, to pursue her love of painting. She says her high school AP art course played a big role in guiding her choices, academically and in the world of art.  “The teachers are preparing you specifically for submitting a portfolio for a grade.  You’re challenged to create a series of pieces and they need to have a cohesive theme. That course really pushed me to test my limits and helped me form a concept about my art.”

Artist Receptions at the Park Avenue Wine Bar and Merchant in Barrington“My work evolves from my experience of living in the suburban Midwest. With a focus on color and pattern, my detailed representational paintings and collages draw attention to banal landscapes, structures, objects and situations that are often so familiar they become invisible.  Making the invisible visible by finding beauty, strangeness, unfamiliarity or irony in the ordinary and familiar is the motivation for my work.”

When you view her oil paintings, Amanda says you’ll notice that they often contradict the size of their subject.

“Their scale fosters and intimate and captivating relationship with both maker and viewer. They often exist in a series as well, as I am drawn to patterns created by repetition.”

Amanda Paulson Oil Paintings
Stale Air, from The Days After Tomorrow series, 2007, oil on panel, 8″ x 8″ – Amanda Paulson

You can clearly see Amanda “making the invisible visible” in the graphic and bold images of intersecting telephone poles and wires depicted in two series titled, Loops and Lines and Crosses and Carvings. You’ll find this 8″ x 8″ piece, Loops and Lines #1, currently on display and for sale for $295 at the Park Avenue Wine Bar.

The work of Barrington Artist Amanda Paulson
Loops and Lines #1, 2008, oil on panel, 8″ x 8″ – Amanda Paulson

Amanda says her paintings explore the relationships of past to present, familiar to unfamiliar and innocence to corruption. “It evokes a feeling of nostalgia and examines the distortion of our collective memory.”

Oil Paintings by Barrington Artist, Amanda Paulson
Liberty: Route 66 Motel, 2009, oil on panel, 48″ x 48″ – Amanda Paulson

If you’d like to meet Amanda Paulson, talk with her about her inspiration and view her work up close, all are invited to an artist reception and wine tasting being hosted in her honor from 5:30 to 7 tonight at Park Avenue Wine Bar and Merchant at 205 Park Avenue in downtown Barrington.  If you can’t make tonight’s reception, be sure to check out the current exhibit at the Park Avenue Wine Bar which will be on display during this weekend’s Art Festival and beyond.  You can peruse dozens of Amanda’s paintings by clicking HERE and you can read more about her at Amanda-Paulson.com.

Please stay tuned because we’ll be featuring more artists involved in this weekend’s Barrington Art Festival in the coming days right here at 365Barrington.com.

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