Issue 17
Amanda Visell
By Camille LowryPortrait By Adam Wallacavage
Amanda Visell is fair, tall and slim with a delicate face that peeks out from long bangs. She could be the girl next door, if she didn’t have a predilection for things dark and gleefully naughty. She is also frank, funny and deadpan. It’s no wonder that she’s garnered a following in the art world, since her paintings, sculptures and toys are just as surprising and complex as she is.
While her art has a childlike whimsy, it is made for an adult audience. Her paintings are full of smiling characters unaware they are in peril, or responding to the danger before them with simply a frown. They contain a retro feel that reflects her appreciation for vintage Walt Disney concept art, as well as a tone that mirrors her favorite TV show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The danger that lurks in her creations is always painted with a bit of a wink toward the audience. “Danger,” she says, “is a common theme. But that’s life.”
Her playful portfolio includes the painting “Midnight Snack,” which depicts ghoulish creatures dangling from trees over a marshmallow-roasting Boy Scout troop. Another piece has two beasties preparing to eat a baby painted beneath the word “share.” Among her limited-edition toys are the “AxEphunt,” a metal elephant wielding a battle-axe, and the “Underwater Carnivorous Giraffe,” a resin figure whose long tongue is wrapped around a child. She’s also portrayed cheerful scenes such as her painting of a young boy and girl riding a blue unicorn who licks off their ice cream cone.
Amanda has always had an independent spirit. She is a high-school drop out; her skills are self-taught. At 18, she moved to Los Angeles from Washington state hoping to break into animation. She says, “I planned on going to art school at CalArts. They turned me down. And then I realized I didn’t like school at all. I have no patience for anyone telling me what to do.”
In lieu of attending school, Amanda sought to develop her talents through work. She soon landed a painting job where she could hone her skills, albeit working in an unlikely medium. She explains, “I painted clogs, literally painted clogs imported from Sweden. They were leather and super colorful. They were sold at Anthropologie. But they were hand painted with animation paint.”
Fortunately, the husband of her clog-selling employer worked in animation. He served as mentor to Amanda, and introduced her to the work of classic Disney artist Mary Blair, whose style she mimicked until she found her own. Her mentor’s connections also helped her secure work in stop-motion animation, which proved to be unsatisfying work and a bit of a dead end. Despite great effort to gain employment in her chosen field, her animation career never got off the ground. “I couldn’t get into drawn animation in any way,” she says. “Every time I tried I completely failed.”
Luckily her stalled career helped her discover her true path. She says, “I started making paintings to get into animation and ended up just making paintings. I just switched.” While she has left behind the field of animation, she’s continued to use materials of the trade, first out of habit and now out of preference. She uses cel-vinyl paint exclusively to bring her images to life. And her paintings remain cartoony. There’s a lot of movement in her scenes, with characters bending into unnatural angles, often ending up upside down.
Her paintings were first exhibited in the “Everything But the Kitschen Sync” show at the La Luz de Jesus Gallery. However, she did not attend the art opening. She says, “I try not to look at my art. I find it totally embarrassing. The whole experience of galleries is pretty uncomfortable. I’m not a people person.”
While she has recently formed a circle of friends and collaborative partnerships with other local artists, Amanda has always been a loner. She says, “I don’t think I had friends growing up. I would say no, mostly no. I had loser friends.”
She sold her first painting at La Luz, a piece called “Kitten Currency,” showing an overall-wearing monster holding kittens. “It’s really a tribute to Buffy. In the show, demons get together to play poker and use kittens as money,” she says. After the sale she realized she was onto something. She put all of her energy into making art for a living.
She describes her audience as “boys that will be 20 forever.” But many of her buyers purchase her art to place in nurseries, despite the macabre subject matter. She says, “I find that bizarre. Robots terrorizing children? Or vampires stealing a baby? If I were a little kid with that in my room, I’d be horrified.” In fact, several of her paintings show a child scared in their bed by something sinister. Those she admits are autobiographical: “I’ve always had trouble with sleeping and nightmares.”
Amanda says, “I think when people look at my art they remember things.” At first glance her images aren’t dissimilar to childhood favorites of the past. A painting of an alligator might seem cheerful, until, upon a closer viewing, “you realize that alligator is going to eat that child.”
Alligators and crocodiles are often portrayed by Amanda. She says she paints them “because they’re terrifying.” However, her reptilian villains, even though they may be shown snacking on people, are sweet looking. “Everything I do is kind of sweet looking,” she says. “If you see the crocodile eating babies, he’s not terrifying because you are seeing it from his point of view. A lot of people ask me, ‘Why is he eating babies?’ That’s what he would eat.”
Making toys was a natural progression from working in stop-motion animation, where she helped create puppets for production. Her toys are hand-painted, sometimes limited to a production of 25. She claims that her work with toys and paintings inform each other. She says, “I think sculpting and building things helped me be a better painter. I’ve done sculptures that ended up being paintings, but started as sculptures first. Like the ‘Drunky McSkunky’ thing, it was never intended to be a painting. I did it as a sculpture and then kept going.”
Drunky McSkunky, a drunken hobo, is a recurring character of Amanda’s. “He’s a loveable character,” she says. “He’s not a scary hobo, but a nice hobo that you would want to drink with.” Drunky may have a bulbous red nose, and some missing teeth, but he always seems to be smiling. He’s also shown keeping company with a pink elephant. When asked why he’s with an elephant, Amanda responds cryptically, “Because you know, elephants and alcohol. That would be his best friend. Can you picture a better best friend for a drunk hobo than a pink elephant?”
Amanda’s art hasn’t always received a positive reaction. Her audience broadened after she created artwork for Disneyland for the anniversary of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, as well as other events. Some Disney fans are a bit surprised when they discover her personal work. She explains, “People track me down through my relationship with [Disney] and get a little creeped out by some other things, expecting things that weren’t going to be as ‘baby-eating.’” Drunky McSkunky took people by surprise too. She says, “The booze is a much bigger issue than the baby eating. A lot of people got off of my mailing list.” Drunky is sometimes marketed with the phrase “Booze is delicious.” She says, “People got pretty offended by that. I think it’s weird. But that’s good to know.”
While Amanda paints a lot of people being eaten, she happens to be a vegetarian. About her diet she says, “I’ve eaten alligator before. It’s not great. It’s like chicken-fried steak. I actually think I stopped eating meat right after. I just think it’s gross and unnecessary. If I were on Survivor I could kill a chicken though.”
Despite a few roadblocks along the way, Amanda has managed to find a life of creative freedom. She has never questioned her path or wondered what might have been in animation. Her single-minded focus and unique point of view have brought her success. She says, “I think all of the qualities I have that made it hard for me to be hired by people, are the qualities that make it easy for me to keep going. It doesn’t stop being hard. But I like what I’m doing.”