About The Artist

Amanda Reilly is an interdisciplinary female contemporary fine artist & illustrator based out of New York. She is known for her energetic illustrative style and subjects immersed in chaos. She graduated from Farmingdale State College in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in graphic design from their Visual Communications program. At FSC she received an outstanding academic excellence honors award by the Visual Communications department. Before graduating she started professionally showing at various art galleries within New York. She was awarded a spot in the Society Of Illustrators Student Scholarship Exhibition as well as the Director’s Cut new emerging talent show at The Art League Of Long Island in 2012. In 2020 “Human Nature” her solo show at Muñeca Arthouse of 30+ new works were featured on Hi-Fructose & she exhibited and was published in the Society Of Illustrators 62 (2020). Presently, Amanda is a recipient of the 2024 NYSCA fine arts grant and has a solo show exhibition this year at the Museum Of Contemporary Art Long Island.

Amanda has championed unique opportunities for artists in Long Island & New York. From 2015- 2018 she co-created Sideshow Sketch Night, a live figure drawing event bringing the boisterous and colorful world of the NY sideshow and cabaret scene to the growing art scene of Long Island. She curated exciting themed costumed drawing events that highlighted sideshow, burlesque & boylesque performance art. In 2022 she founded & currently curates PAC Paint Showdown with the Patchogue Arts Council, which specifically invites artists to collaboratively live paint in public with one another in friendly competitive events.

Artist Statement

Amanda speaks from her own experiences within her work, her paintings and drawings depict the emotional strengths and shortcomings of humankind. Themes of grief, frustration, pain, self-doubt & loneliness run wild through her visual language. She strives to have the viewer see beauty in fault and dullness in perfection. As she states, “No body is perfect. We act on our emotional inhibitions it’s what makes us grounded as humans. I think somehow in some form or another we are reminded of this everyday in our lives.” Amanda’s work is visceral and chaotic. Each one of her compositions transports the viewer into intense colorful hellscapes which display colliding vivid pigments that vibrate off each other. Lines echo uneasiness, tension and anxiety. She works primarily in painting and ink drawing but has stretched the limits of her work into more interdisciplinary practices including animation, and digital media.