April Artist Amber Whitlock

I first began dabbling in art when I was 8 years old, first by sketching from the Sunday comic strips then with more serious, realistic drawings, then with acrylic paints. When I was 13, a family friend offered to trade me babysitting hours for oil paintings lessons and I have been obsessed with oil painting ever since. My first influences in oil painting were Bob Ross and Thomas Kinkaide. I spent hours watching recordings of Bob Ross and trying to replicate his technique. I knew from then my dream was to someday be a professional painter, traveling the world and painting on street corners or anywhere else that inspired me. I went to Grace College in Winona Lake, IN and got my degree in fine art in 2013. After college I stayed in Indiana and got married and started a family with my husband. After my first child was born, my postpartum anxiety was so bad that my husband encouraged me to be a stay-at-home mom and use that time to pursue my art some more. I experimented with a wide variety of DIY crafts and many mediums for a few years before 2018 when i finally realized I was not honoring my passions as an artist and decided to focus solely on oil painting. Since then, the growth and change I have seen in myself has been tremendous and with each painting I push myself to see more growth.

My style and choice of subjects over the years has fluctuated. I thought my main interest was in landscape painting, it wasn't until about 5 years ago when I started painting animals for the first time that I considered the possibility that my talents may lie more with wildlife painting. I still tend to paint any subject that I may be drawn to ranging from landscapes to television characters, but I always seem to come back to wildlife. There is something about the textures of different animals and the joy of bringing life into their eyes that always has me coming back for more. I love to aim for a more realistic style while playing around with a little bit of impressionism, finding the right balance between painting every tiny detail and letting the brushwork do the talking. One thing that's never changed about my style though is my love of bright vibrant colors and sharp contrasts in highlights and shadows.

Connect to Amber Whitlock

My goal as an artist is another thing that remains the same since the first time, I picked up a paintbrush. In a world that has always seemed a little dark and scary to me, all I have ever wanted to do as an artist is to bring light to the things, I found to be beautiful and fascinating. Whether that is a striking landscape, or the simple elegance in a ladybug, or in the colors and expressions in a movie character. I fully believe that there is still a vast amount of beauty in the world and by painting it and putting my own spin on it, I can remind myself and everyone who is touched by my art just how wonderful this world can truly be. I still dream of traveling and painting around the world but for now I am honored to stay home and raise my children and share my art with our little corner of the world.

Amber Whitlcok