We were lucky to catch up with Amanda Azous recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Amanda, thanks for joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I dabbled in art in high school and early university. I had a piece in a show. I married a talented artist, but we later divorced. Couldn’t make a living at art. My return to art has been circuitous.

I switched course and graduated with a bachelors of landscape architecture (BLA) from University of Washington (UW). It fed my inner artist and was grounded in another less recognized passion, that of science.

But I graduated with my BLA during a time when a billboard was posted in Seattle asking the last person leaving to please turn the lights out. No one needed landscape design. The local economy was in shambles.

I worked on Amtrak as a train attendant for two years while I looked for a professional job.

My first serious professional offer came from The Boeing Company. I worked at a division called operations analysis where I analyzed and recommended future company investment development opportunities. I was mentored there by a person who liked hiring people with odd backgrounds for the work as he thought they brought out of the box perspectives. Later I earned a master’s in civil engineering and environmental science at UW specializing in water and land resources.

I had an intense and rewarding science and engineering career. I co-authored and edited a textbook on wetlands and urbanization. I ran my own business and worked for another where I was able to travel to unusual places including Haiti and the Pribiloff Islands. I devoted my career to development that was sustainable and accounted for climate change. I retired from my career.

Suddenly, I had time, an opening in my life. I looked around and tried on ideas. Then I became an Artist again. I’m late to the profession in age but not in spirit or calling. A friend told me I must have nurtured an artist inside me all these years. The joy and peace while creating is nourishing and ecstatic.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I paint transformational abstract expressions of nature, energy and emotions. My paintings are deep with patterns and textures and often meditational. Off Grid Studio, where I paint, symbolizes my lifestyle as well as my artistic mind.

Nature is my muse. Daily seeing the sky, water and land change from my studio, spending time on the water, exploring my island’s special places, awareness of the changes wrought by human activities …these experiences frame and inspire my work.

I see the world as flowing energy. It is a model of the universe I identify with both as a scientist and as a spiritual person.

I face art creation with a science-based mind. The requirements of compelling composition feel science based. What captures the eye…where light shines…how one travels through a painting and the emotional pathways it takes the viewer. I strive for abstractions capable of carrying the imagination to unknown places…the mind to unthought thoughts.

Art is as analytical as science but my outcomes as an artist are unhindered by rigid scientific methods and that’s deeply freeing. The order of science feeds my soul, yet I thrive in the disorder of artistic expression.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

It is unquestionably the sheer thrill of creation, the sense of having tapped into an energy source larger than oneself and the joy and cohesiveness it provides. Most paintings I could not duplicate no matter how I try. I look at a completed work and only half understand how I got there. It’s crazy but also a compelling state of mind. It keeps me coming back to that beautiful blank canvas.

I do have to admit here that the creation process is rarely smooth going. Virtually all paintings have a time when I realize that I have ruined the painting, either by the crazy palette I picked, too much of something like a certain stroke, pattern or color or all of that. I continue to shock myself by saving the painting, over and over, and then am pleased, satisfied, and ignorant of how I pulled it off. No hubris intended. Just grateful my inner artist knows what to do.

But beyond the creation thrill is also the experience of the people who see my work. I’ve had moments of standing behind people looking at and commenting on a piece and just that they take that moment of attention is rewarding. Then, with my Illuminated Paintings, it is especially fun because the paintings change as the illumination changes and it is unexpected. People do a double take and then they slow down and take a few meditative moments to watch the colors and patterns weave with the original painting.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My driving goal is self-realization. I want to know and understand all parts of me. That feels like a path to completion and enlightened awareness. While I had long dabbled in art, I had no idea there was this inner Amanda that yearned to paint and paint large wall size works. Now the largest I’ve managed with my space to date is 52 x 72 inches but I can see bigger in my heart and mind. And now here is this long unrecognized desire and it’s given me renewed attention to life.

My works are abstracted images of thoughts, feelings, and experiences. They have titles based on my sense of the work, but people see their own reflection and interpretation and that is very rewarding as an expressionist artist. I want the viewer to feel, imagine, empathize, and be empowered by what they see.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://azousart.com
• Instagram: @amandaazous
• Facebook: amanda.azous
• Other: [email protected]

Image Credits
All photos belong to me.