Amanda Sutherland
Artist | Actor | Creator
I’ve always loved making things.
Today, I’m a Tasmanian artist, actor and creator working across painting, photography and theatre, but for a long time I never really thought of myself as an artist.
As a kid, it was paint-by-numbers. Later came crafts, costumes and props, followed by theatre, acting and eventually university. For a long time, though, I never really thought of myself as an artist.
It took returning to university later in life — and a few people seeing something in my work before I could see it myself — for me to begin recognising that creativity had been there all along.
Today, I’m a multidisciplinary artist based in Tasmania, exploring painting, photography, acting and theatre. You’ll usually find me creating something, experimenting with something new or wondering what might happen if I try something a little differently.
Welcome to my creative journey.
My Creative Journeys
I don’t create in just one way.
Different ideas lead me in different directions, and I’m learning to be comfortable with that. Sometimes the answer is paint. Sometimes it’s a photograph. Sometimes it’s standing on a stage and becoming somebody else.
These are the creative journeys I’m exploring right now.
Painting Journey
Painting was where I really began to believe I could call myself an artist.
I’m fascinated by colour, light, landscape and the ordinary moments that make me stop and look twice. I’m still learning, experimenting and discovering what kind of painter I am — and I’m enjoying finding out.
Photography Journey
Photography is teaching me to look more closely.
Since moving to Tasmania, I’ve become fascinated by changing seasons, fog, frost, water and the way light can transform a familiar landscape. Photography gives me another way to notice and share those small moments.
Acting & Theatre Journey
Theatre has been part of my creative life for many years, although I originally spent much more time behind the scenes than in front of an audience.
Costumes and props led to producing, directing, technical theatre and eventually acting. Today I continue exploring performance on stage and screen while discovering what else theatre can teach me.
It Turns Out I’ve Always Been an Artist
It just took me a while to realise it.
Creativity has followed me throughout my life, although for many years I didn’t recognise it as anything particularly significant.
I liked making things, but I also liked having a pattern to follow. Then my daughter became a dancer and I learned to sew her costumes. Sewing became decorating. Decorating became designing. Costumes led to props, and when she moved into drama, I followed her into the world of theatre.
Eventually, I found myself acting too.
When I returned to university later in life, I thought I was going there to discover what I hadn’t learned from years spent working in the industry.
Instead, I discovered something about myself.
A ceramic project was accepted into an exhibition. Work I created in another class was described as “exquisite”. Then I took my first painting unit and discovered how much I genuinely loved making art.
Gradually, Artist stopped being a word I put on a business card and became something I actually believed.
I’m still discovering what being an artist means for me. I hope I always will.
Following My Curiosity
One of the things I’m learning is that I don’t need to know exactly where every idea is going before I start.
Sometimes an idea becomes a painting. Sometimes picking up a camera and looking more closely at the world around me reveals something I might otherwise have walked straight past.
These are some of the projects that have grown from following my curiosity.
The Beauty Within
What happens when I stop and really look at the things around me?
The Beauty Within is a series of six photographs that grew from slowing down, looking more closely and finding something interesting in ordinary surroundings.
Hidden flowers, bare branches, familiar landscapes, the texture of paperbark and the different paths created by the branches of a tree became opportunities to notice something I might otherwise have overlooked.
For me, the series became about more than photographing what was in front of me. It became an exploration of observation, imagination and the beauty that can be found when I take the time to look beyond the obvious.
The Aurora Project
What happens when you return to the same image again and again as your skills change?
The Aurora Project is an ongoing painting project documenting my development as an artist by returning to the same image of the Aurora Australis over time.
Rather than trying to reproduce the previous painting, each new version records what I’ve learned, how my decisions have changed and where my painting practice is taking me.
Sometimes I Don’t Want to Make the Expected Thing
One of the biggest changes in my creative life has been learning to trust my own ideas.
Once, I liked having a pattern to follow.
Now I’m becoming increasingly interested in asking:
What happens if I do this my way?
That’s how a university still-life exercise ended up becoming Daiquiri Duck. I could have painted another conventional still life, but I wanted to make something that felt more like me.
I’m beginning to notice the same instinct across the rest of my creative work.
I don’t know yet whether my practice will eventually settle around landscape, mental health, self-acceptance, the everyday, something completely different — or all of them.
For now, I’m giving myself permission to find out.
don’t believe creativity requires having everything figured out before you begin.
For me, it starts with curiosity.
Discover | Create | Share
Discover
Notice something that catches my attention.
Create
Make something from what I’ve discovered.
Share
Put it into the world and allow someone else to experience it in their own way.
Painting, photography, acting and theatre may look like very different forms of creativity, but for me they’re connected by the same desire to notice things, try things and see what happens.
Half the fun is in the trying.