Amanda Tye

PAINT YOUR OWN STORY.

I always knew that I’d live a life of creativity, but leaving the stability of an established career and a regular paycheck to become a full-time artist was a terrifying leap of faith.

When I look back on my career, I realise that I’ve been lucky to fi nd a profession that was a good fi t for me. It took many jobs before I landed a position as a Visual Arts and Photography teacher at a reputable Northern Beaches high school. It was the ideal teaching opportunity, and I thought I’d ticked all the boxes in my career. However, 15 years on, something was tugging at my heartstrings.

I worked with the most amazing, inspiring and intelligent young people at Manly Selective Campus. Teaching was an extremely rewarding career, and I was doing what I loved, but after many years working in the same room at the same school, things started to feel inauthentic.

After writing a leadership program and studying solution-focused therapy, I began to apply what I was teaching to my own life. I changed my computer password to refl ect my long term goal, joined an art group to broaden my creative community, enrolled in a small business course, applied for artist opportunities and entered art prizes year after year, and just kept on painting. I didn’t know what I would do outside of teaching, but it was a stable career. I had a family to support, and I was terrifi ed to leave but knew deep inside that it was time.

Then out of the blue, I received an invitation from an artist I admired to be a part of a new art exhibition in Seaforth. There would be 13 artists, and I said ‘Yes’ without even reading the details.

For the next 12 months after teaching all day, I worked until early hours of the morning, fi nishing my paintings and helping towards the running of this new gallery called “Sydney Road Gallery”.

Suddenly while I was sitting in the same classroom where I had seen hundreds of students come and go, it became crystal clear to me. I couldn’t do this anymore. I had hit a wall. I quit the job I had studied for at University and worked towards all my life. I was going to do it. I was going to become a full time artist.

People love to tell you what you shouldn’t or can’t do. Being a full-time artist wasn’t ever the dream. It was a forgotten dream that I had deemed impossible. Twenty years ago at University, we were told that “only 2 percent make it.”

I used to preach to my students, “Creativity is letting go of the fear of being wrong.” But, “prove them wrong” became my new motto. It’s still written in large print on my studio wall.

It has been six years, and I’m still painting eight hours a day, fi ve days a week, and I’m not planning on stopping any time soon. •

Amanda Tye’s multi-award winning work depicts the landscape of Sydney in oil on canvas, inspired by nature as a way to escape and retreat from daily life. Her works encourage us to be in the moment with the natural world - especially one poised between the ocean and bush.

Amanda’s next solo exhibition will be held in May 2023 at HAKE House of Art, followed by Sydney Road Gallery in October 2023. Her works are available at A K Bellinger Gallery, Sydney Road Gallery, Manyung Gallery in Melbourne and can be viewed at her studio in Allambie Heights by appointment. “...painting is about escapism and freedom; coupled with music, it is an obsession, a habit, returning each day to do better, to be better... but without experiences fuelled by the magic of the natural and man-made world, there wouldn’t be anything to give.” Amanda Tye

AMANDA TYE // INSTA: @AMANDA_TYE // amandatye.com