Amanda Caldwell lives and works in St. Thomas, Ontario. She is a recent graduate from The University of Western Ontario with a Bachelor of Education Degree. She also has an Honours Visual Arts Degree and an Arts Management Graduate Diploma from The University of Western Ontario. She has been a practicing artist since 2006, working mainly in relief printmaking. She is a member of the St. Thomas – Elgin Artists’ Guild and a strong supporter of the development of the arts in Elgin County.
Amanda's art is a process of deconstruction and reconstruction of landscape spaces. The design process divides the landscape into shapes but the printing process rebuilds the landscape through the layering of colour. This creates something familiar but precarious, as nature is, and comments on the beauty and destruction of natural spaces. For the artist, the printmaking process is symbolic: as many of these places are being destroyed, the art-making process allows her to put them back together, building them piece by piece. But there is always the moment of realization that the reconstruction is symbolic, and in reality all we have left are these reconstructed images and not reconstructed spaces.