Hi I’m Mandy.
I've been making art since the fourth grade, when I picked up a how-to-draw book at the Scholastic book fair and decided I was going to be a "drawer" from then on.
I'm a Michigan-based artist who got my real start in Lansing. I began seriously painting and selling my work in the mid-2010s while working at Painting with a Twist. After classmates saw some paintings I'd made for a project, they started asking me to make artwork for them. One commission turned into another, and I've been making art for other people ever since.
I've painted everything from race cars, semi trucks, and dairy cows to Dungeons & Dragons characters and my own colorful fantasy worlds. I don't really believe in sticking to one subject.
And honestly, I like it that way.
This Is My Brain. Welcome To It.
I don't think about just one thing. I have more than one idea I want to communicate, and painting gives me a way to share all those little, weird, passing thoughts that live in my head.
I'm not always great at putting those ideas into words. When I try to explain something out loud, it can come out mixed up or backward. But when I paint an idea and put it in front of someone, it feels like I've managed to get a little piece of myself out into the world.
That's why I don't stick to one subject. My work can move from fantasy worlds to animals to people to whatever else catches my attention. The common thread is me.
When people walk into my booth, I sometimes tell them:
"This is my brain. Welcome to it."
And honestly, that's probably the best way I know to describe my work.
My style has grown out of a lifetime of drawing the things I loved. As a kid, if Michaels had a how-to book about cartoons, manga, or drawing fairies, I probably owned it. I taught myself by copying the things that caught my eye, and later did the same with artists I discovered online.
Those influences never really left. They've just become part of my own visual language.
My work blends the imaginative, exaggerated qualities of illustration with the color, texture, and process of traditional painting. I work primarily in acrylic and use a lot of color. My figures don't always have realistic proportions, and I'm not interested in making something look like a photograph.
I'd rather make something that looks like me.
How I Got Here
Why I Paint
Painting is one of the few times I stop thinking about everything else.
I'm usually thinking about the next thing I need to do, the next problem to solve, or whatever is waiting for me. But when I'm painting, I'm completely absorbed in the process: mixing colors, building layers, figuring out what needs to happen next, and watching something that existed only in my head slowly become real.
I want my work to make someone feel like they've found something that is truly theirs. Something they love because it's different, because it speaks to them, or because it expresses something they couldn't quite put into words themselves.
I don't care if my work looks like a photograph.
I want someone to look at it and think, "That's dope."
