Amanda Knowles is an art educator, curator, and artist currently based in Seattle, WA. She earned a BA in Fine Art from the University of Pennsylvania and a MA and MFA in Printmaking from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has received grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Artist Trust, and was a 2019 finalist for the Neddy Award in painting. Her work has been purchased by many corporate collections and King County, the City of Bellevue, Seattle Public Utilities, and City of Seattle Portable Works Collection. Knowles has held residencies at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Kala Art Institute, Ucross Foundation, Anchor Graphics, Centrum, and the Duwamish Artist Residency and in 2024 she was selected for residencies at Vashon Artist Residency, Vashon Island, WA and Casa Lü, Mexico City, Mexico. She has participated in panel discussions including Abstract Painting Mid-Century + Today as part of the Seattle Art Fair. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.

Knowles teaches printmaking and drawing at North Seattle College and is the director of the North Seattle College Art Gallery where she has worked for ten years to bring contemporary art and the Seattle Art world to the college.

Her work can be found in many private and public collections such as King County, the City of Bellevue, Seattle Public Utilities, and City of Seattle Portable Works Collection.

I am a city dweller. As a child on the East Coast, I was put to sleep by the glow of the stoplight on the corner cycling through green... yellow... red. At 10 we moved to the country, and, for a couple of years, I commuted by train back to the city for school. Every morning, I watched as the trees fell away and buildings grew in their place and every evening these buildings and gridded city streets were replaced by fields and curving country roads. I fell hard for the infrastructure that ran alongside the tracks as we approached the city. It made me think that I was part of something bigger and it lulled me. When I moved to the Midwest for graduate school of course I noticed the lush greens of the summer foliage and their autumnal flamboyance, the lakes that froze every winter, but I once again fell for the infrastructure, the human ingenuity. My interest began with the grain silos and, from there, the power station distributing energy to the town. My photos of that time is dotted with these structures. Now, living in the Pacific Northwest I have been soaking in the slow and steady build happening around me. I have watched expectantly as the city around me changes in one sort of progress, constant “betterment” and all of the implications of that idea.

In its making my work is about a thinking through. It shadows a belonging, the building of a life story, and the documentation of this life. I use double exposures made in a Holga plastic camera and photos as a sketchbook. This is where I explore my surroundings and document when I am paying attention. I combine these photographs with images from high gloss architectural and interior design magazines, blurring the difference of my single life with documentation of our shared dream lives and then abstracting both through the manipulation and combination of these images with painting and drawing. Here I create a melded, blurred, and new city.

Booz Allen Hamilton in Herndon, VA
Canon Americas, Melville, NY
CHI Franciscan Hospital
Children's Memorial Research Center, Chicago, IL
City of Bellevue, Bellevue, WA
Defense Analyses in Alexandria, VA
Deloitte, Philadelphia, PA
The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA
Fidelity Investments, Boston, MA
The Collection of Gail Gibson & Claudia Vernia, Seattle WA
Hunterdon Museum of Art, Clinton, NJ
Iridium Satellite Communications, McLean, VA
The Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, ME
King County Public Art Collection, King County, WA
Kohler Art Library Archives, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
Merrill Lynch, Seattle, WA
Corporate Collection of OPC Organizations & Projekt Consulting GmbH, Germany
Peninsula College, Port Angeles, WA
Peoria Art Guild Permanent Collection, Peoria, IL
Polsinelli, St. Louis, MO
Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center, Tarzana, CA
Rosetta Inpharmatics, Seattle, WA
Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, Seattle, WA
Seattle Swank, Seattle, WA
Shoreline Community College, Shoreline, WA
Stanford Healthcare, Stanford, CA
StatOil, Norway
Triennale de Chamalieres Print Center, France
University of Arizona, Print Collection, Tucson, AZ
University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Iowa City, IA
University of Kansas, Special Collections at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, Lawrence, KS
Vinson & Elkins LLP, Houston, TX
Washington State Art Collection
Western Michigan University Print Collection, Kalamazoo, MI (Portfolio: Habitual Ritual)
Wisconsin Union Galleries, Permanent Collection, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI