About the Artist

Amber’s love of timber began when she was a child. Growing up in the Southern Highlands of NSW on a property bordered by bushland nature was her playground. Born to a woodworker, the memories of her father’s workshop transcend time and the same spicy scent of timber mingles with linseed oil and varnish in her own studio. 

Amber originally trained as a painter at the North Adelaide School of Art and spent many years after in design and interiors. She is an inspired traveller whose collected adventures and conversations from around the world bring meaning to her life and art.

Her work is a synthesis of dualistic ideals. It sits fluidly within the contemporary realm, combining highly edited aspects of modernism through marquetry, contrasted with delicate embellishments in oil that are more akin to realism. Her work is instantly recognisable.

The duality of her process extends into her umbrella concept - exploring what it is to bring a vision into being, to manifest. “Thought-becomes-word-becomes-form” - explored in the shift between linear detail, translucency, solid shape and evolved detail. These threads and themes weave across the surface encouraging the eye to connect what was once disconnected creating deeper piece specific concepts.

The core of her work focuses predominantly on still life interiors which become a metaphor for the “interior of self”. In her past professional work Amber came to understand and express people’s emotional connection to the interiors they lived in and to help them actualize their personal, creative and safe spaces. Introspectively she sees the spaces people dwell within as being very much connected to their interior self. She uses timber marquetry to create shape and composition driven modernist interior settings, then embellishes with delicate and detailed overlays in oil. The embellishments may be objects, artefacts or sometimes creatures that rupture the realist construction. The collection of objects is sometimes orderly and sometimes magical. The oil details introduce a complexity to the work that shifts the focus between the linear and translucent, to colour and realism.

Amber continues to experiment on the fringe of her practice. Deepening her concepts and expanding the breadth of materials used. Discarded materials feature heavily within this work, as too the concept of “Play” which the artist believes is crucial to an evolving practice as well as a beautiful integration into a life well lived.

You can connect with Amber and her other artworks here.

IG: ambersimpsonartist