10 Questions with Amanda Farquharson
Amanda and I met years ago through our mutual friend Kate. Even though I could count on my hands the number of times we have hung out in person, I feel so lucky to know her.
Over the years, we have had countless meaningful exchanges over email, text, and social media. Her insights into life as a creative and a parent always give me so much to think about and connect with. Meanwhile, my home has become more and more filled with her beautiful art, which I also love to give as gifts.
Amanda is one of those astonishing people who seems to be good at absolutely everything. A fiercely talented fine artist, she is also a skilled sewist, embroiderer, gardener, writer, and baker. She even has a background in millinery and puppet making! She is also a truly wonderful human and a super fun and loving mum.
1. Can you tell me a little bit about your history as an artist and creative person?
My dad was an artist, so were my uncle and grandfather. Art was encouraged in our house my whole life and I always saw being an artist as a viable path that was open to me. When I was 12, I took private watercolour lessons with a local watercolour artist, and that really laid the foundation for my painting career! I still gravitate to the colour choices that painter recommended. I had an amazing high school art teacher and ended up going to York University in the Visual Arts program. When I was there I ended up being more drawn to photography and costume sewing than painting, and pursued those for years. After being laid off from a dream job making puppets, I dug out the watercolours from when I was 12 and suddenly all I wanted to do was paint! That was about ten years ago, and now here I am, painting!
2. How did you find your voice as an artist and maker?
I think we all have a unique way of seeing the world, and when I look at art I made as a child I can see “oh, look, I still draw cartoon eyes the same way!” I try to hold on to little kernels of that unique way I saw things as a kid. Learning about art history and following other artists’ work can inspire me to try new ideas and techniques, but I try to find a balance where I am not taking in so much of other people’s work that it profoundly pushes me in a new direction. That said, I do see a few large influences that shaped the way I paint. My father was an illustrator of commercial house portraits and every time I paint architecture, I feel a little bit of him on the page. The early watercolour lessons I took at 12 have shaped my colour palette. But I also love learning, and trying new things. I think you can see in the progression of my art that sometimes I try something new, abandon it, come back to it later, or move on using a tiny part of it that worked. Lots of artists find a style and stick to it for decades, building up a solid body of very consistent work but that will never be me! I like to experiment too much and I try to consider that a strength rather than a flaw!
3. How has your style evolved over time?
I think my watercolour skills have refined with years of practice, you can see a lot more brush control and finesse as my work progresses. I’ve also branched out in the last few years into oil paint, acrylic paint and pastels, which really opened my eyes to new colours and techniques. About two years ago I began painting en plein air (which just means painting outside!) and that has had a huge impact on my art. Now I prefer to take a sketch and colour notes in person wherever I can because the colours you see in person and those in a photo are drastically different. I think plein air painting has made me see more nuanced colours and also loosened me up - you are racing against the moving sun/weather/shadows when you paint outside and speed is more important than getting a line perfectly straight. You really learn to prioritize what you want to capture most first, and not get caught up in details unless you have time. I really love my plein air paintings because they are so alive and fresh, I am trying to add that feeling to my studio work, as well!
4. How did you decide to take the leap into making art your profession? What made it possible? What were (are?) the biggest obstacles?
My husband’s steady income and belief in me really made being an artist possible. When I met him and agreed to move to Hamilton from Toronto, part of the “deal” was that I would work part time and get a couple days to work on my art. I am extremely lucky and privileged to have that support. Once we had kids, this transitioned to more of a “full time mom/part time artist” scenario and then the pandemic disrupted that again. It’s been very difficult to take care of two little kids and get anything else done. Parenting is the largest obstacle to my art career, hands down, but I would not change anything! I know that as my children get older and more independent I will be able to achieve more in my art career and I really try to make my career goals more about process (ie. enjoying the actual acts of learning and painting) than about sales, social media followers, etc.
5. Were there gaps in your knowledge or skills that you needed to fill in order to be successful at starting and running your business, or doing the kind of work you wanted to do?
Yes! My two biggest hurdles have been self promotion and pricing my work. For years I was an artist who sold my work online but would meet new people and say absolutely nothing about being an artist! One day someone else mentioned me being an artist in front of a woman I had known for years and she was so shocked it opened my eyes - now I introduce myself as an artist all the time and feel silly for taking so long to have that confidence. Pricing my work is something else I struggle with. I believe in art being accessible to people but I also need to price in order to pay for my time, supplies, and experience. It’s a balancing act!
6. How do you balance finding time to actually create with finding time to document and share your creations?
I don’t actually struggle with this very much. I often take photos with my phone of my work in progress - I usually move any dirty bunched up paper towels or dirty water jugs out of the frame and sometimes move a pencil or two to a more aesthetic location, or I snap a photo of my plein air setup outside. For finished work, I scan anything small and do quick adjustments in photoshop so the scan matches the original. Larger work is either professionally scanned (if I want to make prints) or just captured with my DSLR. I don’t even really overthink my captions - I just type something and press share! Basically I try to keep the social media time to a minimum and the painting time to a maximum.
7. What is the relationship between your fine art practice and other areas of your creative life? Do you think of them as separate animals, or are those impulses totally intertwined?
This is an interesting question. For years I considered all of my creative impulses (sewing, baking, art, embroidery, my kids - whatever I was into!) as one big intertwined mass of ideas. A couple years ago, I talked to a friend who is a curator and she recommended that to be taken more seriously I should dedicate my social media page exclusively to my fine art. I made my family accounts private, moved my “hobbies” to another account and weeded through all of my posts to leave the best of my fine art on display. Over time I have come to separate the fine art from the rest in my mind, as well. Of course there are crossovers - sometimes I paint my kids, or things I’ve grown in my garden, or sometimes my love of botanicals shows up in my embroidery and sewing, but I try to think of my painting time as work time, and I am more likely now to sit down in private to paint and not try to paint while also juggling the kids and other tasks. I think it has benefitted me to separate them!
8. How has your identity/reality as a parent informed or impacted your work life?
I am a mother and an artist, and these two things are hopelessly intertwined, with the parenting role taking a larger part at this time. Sometimes I find myself frustrated watching other peers without children/with grown children - I see they applied to more shows, attended more events, had time to take classes, and spent the pandemic making so many beautiful paintings. But I try to remember that I will have that kind of time later in my life, and that my painting process isn’t a race. One thing I love about art in general is that it has been used to document our lives for thousands of years and I do see a beauty in capturing my little slice of the world, even if it’s a mess of toys and dog beds and unfolded laundry. From a parenting perspective, I love that my kids see me making art and following my passions, and that I inspire them to try things, too! Last month I painted lemons in a yellow bowl and then my daughter did a series of paintings in the same bowl with different fruits, it’s so great to see her directly get inspired by what I am doing.
9. What does a typical day look like for you?
You are about to see why I don’t get much painting done during the pandemic! We wake up early— my three year old son was up at 5am today but sometimes it’s earlier. The morning is all feeding the dog and kids, getting myself a coffee and a breakfast bar, putting out all the little fires like milk spilling or squabbles over toys. I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes in October 2020, so my morning routine also involves checking blood sugars, eating limited carbs, etc. My husband recently introduced me to bullet journaling so I sit down and figure out my tasks for the day. Because it’s spring, my task list contains lots of things like getting the kids rain boots, starting seeds, and getting my dog his yearly shots. During the winter I sit and have my coffee every morning in a daylight lamp, but now that it’s spring I step barefoot into the yard and do some deep breathing and grounding exercises with my feet on the grass while I let the dog out.
We have a part time nanny— she is the reason I am able to have time to paint, or do this interview, or just have a nap (I did mention my son woke me up at 5am, right?)! On days where she comes, my days are filled with painting, admin for my business like shipping cards or prints, answering emails, posting on social media, or helping my husband with admin and bookkeeping work for his business. On days where she doesn’t come, I fill my time with the kids, baking sourdough bread, ordering groceries, doing dishes, making meal plans, laundry, getting them so many snacks, etc! Some days I have a low blood sugar situation and need emergency carbs and have to sit down for a while until I am not shaking.
At 5pm when our nanny leaves, my husband and I usually make dinner together while the kids either play or help. Making homemade dinners has really helped me control my diabetes. My son goes to bed at 7 but my six-year-old daughter stays up until 8, and we try to do quiet bonding activities with her in that hour, like puzzles or games my son isn’t old enough to play yet.
After that I usually review my day in the bullet journal. Sometimes my husband and I do this together so we can compare our to-do lists and help each other out, and also review what worked or didn’t work about the day. Sometimes I use this time before bed to finish up tasks from the day (like packing up things to ship out the next day, starting the next day’s sourdough, dishes, etc), but sometimes I am just exhausted and mindlessly watch tv or have a bath or video call with my mom or sister. Around 10 or 11 pm I give myself insulin, check my sugar one last time and go to bed.
I feel tired even just reading that over! You can see painting time is at a minimum these days.
Kate: Can you tell me more about your experience with bullet-journaling? What does your journal set-set up look like? I tried it about a year ago, and it was a total fail for me. I think this was largely because I watched a lot of YouTube videos about it that emphasized making it super decorative, filling it with little illustrations and paintings. I found that setting it up each month became one more stressful thing on my to do list.
My husband recommended bullet journaling because he uses it for his business and it works well for him. I read the Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future by Ryder Carroll and although I'm aware of the beautifully illustrated versions people make and share on Instagram, my version is more utilitarian. I already have sketchbooks and folios that I pour my creative energy into and I thought lavishly decorating my to-do lists might take away from time spent on my actual art practice (and as you said, it might make the whole bullet journal process less successful just by being so much work and pressure!).
I've laid my journal out as recommended in the book, with a couple of additions that make sense for my specific life, like a little tracker for when I have fed my sourdough starter and some very basic meal plans squished in among my daily logs. I also like to include a little one or two line summary of the day at the end, or cute and funny things my kids said. It's been really working for me so far! It's nice to even just see on paper how many things I accomplished in a day or week.
10. What do you hope a typical day looks like for you five years from now?
Well I hope I am not waking up at 5am still! Ha! I imagine the mornings will be similar, though, in terms of getting the kids ready for school and making lunches and so on. I hope that once both kids are in school and the pandemic is over I will be able to fill my day with more actual painting time, as well as helping my husband even more with his business. Right now it’s hard/impossible to go plein air painting due to lockdowns and my schedule, but when I had my kids in daycare and school before this, I was able to get out painting once or twice a week. It was a huge gift for my art as well as mental health, and I love socializing with other painters.
I hope that in five years I have more time to apply for art shows, and really set up and develop bigger bodies of work that are cohesive. I don’t imagine painting one way forever, but it would be nice to say, “I am going to do a series of giant garden paintings that look like this,” and then actually travel and take sketches, spend the studio time to do that, and display them! I imagine that lots of my time will still be parenting time; as the parent with the more flexible job I will still be the one who usually drops everything if a kid stays home sick, and I will still probably be the one who’s daily task list includes all the things like “buy snow pants” and “need dog food”. I guess I hope my days look a lot like now except a bit more time for art and sleep!
Amanda can be found online @ amandafarquharson.com on Instagram @amandafarquharson, on Facebook @amandafarquarson and on Pintrest @amandafarquarson.
