I occupy sites and they occupy me.
My work is a byproduct, an artifact, a love letter to a moment in time spent noticing. I traverse local patches of wildness lovingly, carefully, slowly. There, I observe how ants crawl, how eastern white pines weep sap, how ghost flowers decay, how great blue herons chase swamp sparrows.
“Attention is the beginning of devotion.” - Mary Oliver
I listen for natural warnings: slithers of snakes and hums of spiders. Some fauna grant me permission to stay: I once watched a beaver build a dam and curious black capped chickadees perch on my easel. Barred owls, on the other hand, let out reaping cries in an attempt to protect their fledglings from my presence. Snapping turtles and white tailed deer prefer I leave at once.
I am a human in nature withstanding
Rain, mosquitoes, ticks
In a trance demanding endurance
It is here, on this uneven ground, between glacial erratic and dying beech tree, I write love letters in ink and oil paint. Their words are made up of gestural marks, a transcendent language, my own constructed tongue to talk to the mute.
My sites are vortexes: curious places that invite investigation of the self and surroundings. Afterall, Henry Wadsworth studied not himself nor the natural world singularly, but the harmonies and discords between him and his surroundings.
And should I visit these delicate and wild places spraying DEET to protect against Lyme disease? Would these liminal wild spaces be happier if I were on the pavement outside their boundaries? I grapple with the space I occupy in the spaces that occupy me, and yet it is here that I am most grounded and aware and alive. My still and silent painting stance mirrors the posture of a tree: a reminder that I am a part of this greater ecological system.
Amanda Bittner is an award-winning painter living and working in Beverly, MA. She received her MFA from Boston University and BFA from Montserrat College of Art. Amanda is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art at Endicott College and teaches painting workshops at many organizations such as the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Cambridge Art Association, Sedona Arts Center, Vancouver Island Artist Workshops and Rocky Neck Art Colony where she sat on the Board of Trustees. Amanda shares her creative practice with an online blog boasting over 25K followers, actively exhibits her work across the Northeast, and has work in private collections across the world.
Most importantly, Amanda completed the New England 67 Challenge and hiked all 4,000’ mountains across New England. :)