Amanda Knowles was raised in Philadelphia, PA. 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. 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. In 2024 she has been selected for residencies at Vashon Artist Residency, Vashon Island, WA and Casa Lü, Mexico City, Mexico.

Knowles teaches printmaking and drawing at North Seattle College. She 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 scene 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.

KING COUNTY
CITY OF BELLEVUE
SEATTLE PUBLIC UTILITIES
CITY OF SEATTLE PORTABLE WORKS COLLECTION