San Antonio artist featured at library

Melissa Federspill
Staff writer
In the limelight for this month’s El Progreso Memorial Library’s artist of the month gallery is San Antonio-based artist Amanda Armistead.
She’s a multimedia artist that draws inspiration from outdoor Texas life, which is then artistically expressed via pencil, acrylic paints, and paper on wood.
The combined mediums create layers of material and give texture and depth to the images. Armistead says she will often use a hand sander on the wood, and steers from canvas because it gives too much.
Along the walls of the gallery, there’s multiple artworks of birds, wildlife, and nature, full of color that makes the gallery wall pop. No two works are alike.
Armistead says she limits herself to only Texas wildlife because with limitations comes creativity.
She started out drawing in pencil but also wanted to incorporate her love for color.
With this work, she takes a finely detailed drawn image and combines it with an imaginative background.
“I like an image with imagination combined,’” said Armistead. Although Armistead currently lives in San Antonio, for most of her life she lived in Uvalde.
She is a class of 1976 graduate from Uvalde High School, and as an adult returned to the campus as an art teacher.
She has two children, a son who lives in Uvalde and daughter – who is also an artist – who lives in Australia.
She became a full-time a artist in 2013 while living in Houston. She creates art and travels to outdoor art shows across Texas.
Her formal art training is from Texas Tech University where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.
Throughout the year, festival-goers can catch her at events such as the Fiesta Arts Fair in San Antonio, the Armadillo Christmas Bizarre in Austin, or the Woodlands Waterway Arts Festival in The Woodlands.
Armistead’s work will be on display for the month of October. El Progreso Memorial Library is located at 301 W. Main St. For more information, call 830-278-2017.
mfederspill@ulnnow.com, 830-278-3335