Undergraduate Scholarship 2022

Amanda Komarniski

University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB

Artist Statement

When I look at myself and everything I come in contact with, I find I am constantly concerned with all the possible ways to view something, and the endless opportunities of understanding and exploring a particular thing. Lately looking inward at my own sense as an individual. While that could all be an explanation for my state of being, which is more often than not anxious, I have come to feel comfort with this concern, and challenge it within my creative practice.

As a third year BFA student at the University of Alberta, my disciplines range from painting to printmaking and design. The works submitted display my regard for vibrance, paint application, experimentation of materials and optics, and understanding physical and emotional elements of myself and what I see. Intentional or not, each work naturally finds itself as a discussion of self, and the ways I work within traditions to create contemporary understandings of identity and technique. Majorly, through forms of portraiture, each work uniquely explores layered understanding of grappling with how I see myself and the world. At its root, my creativity is how I see the world. In all its saturation, struggles and opportunities.