ARTSvCULTURE
Amanda Wathen
CREATING CONTEMPORARY IMPRESSIONISM WITH HER FINGERS
T
he mention of finger painting might conjure happy images of childhood creativity: happily spreading colors without regard to “staying in the lines.” Painting professionally with fingers might sound like a dream come true, and it certainly is for lifelong artist Amanda Wathen. She began her artistic journey as a child, working beside her father, a free-spirited entrepreneur who pursued his own passion creating tiles. Along with her sister, she began painting murals on tiles, which her father then fired in a kiln and sold. Her father, she says, set an amazing example.
The sixth of eight children, Wathen was born to “hippie parents” who valued traveling, experience, and the development of their children as individuals. Homeschooled and self-taught, Wathen was born in California, raised in Arkansas, and married in Kentucky. She had two children in her early 20s, and although raising them and teaching them at home put art “in the background” for a while, she always kept that integral part of herself alive – only hanging art in the home that she had made.
Story by NARCI DROSSOS | Photography by JOY SUMNER PHOTOGRAPHY SHOWCASING THE REGION’S PERSONALITY
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