Artist Talk with Amy Reisland-Speer

Join Amy and Fairbanks Arts for an artist talk where Amy will touch on her past history and her motives behind painting. She will discuss how her process of mixed media came to be, how she executes it, her subjects and why they inspire her.

Amy Reisland-Speer was born in Fairbanks and lived in Tanana for the first fifteen years of her life where she was inspired to become an artist by the environment she saw around her and strongly influenced by wildlife and the Athabaskan culture. 

Amy was encouraged by her parents and art teachers to continue growing and exploring her creative side with different mediums. She decided that paint was the best medium for her to visually express her love of the world around her. She uses oils, acrylics, egg tempera, and mixed media incorporated into her paintings. Amy studied at UAF and graduated with a BA  in Oil Painting in 2000. 

In 2013, Amy received the Fairbanks Arts Association and Interior Alaska Mayor's Youth Arts Award for working with children in the Denali Borough as well as the village of Tanana, where she and the students painted a mural for the school gym. Amy has held a lecture at the UAF Extension Center, OLLI, has hosted many paint nights in Healy and Anderson and has instructed several students with private painting lessons. 


“Alaska, its mountains, animals, birds, insects, and flowers
have always inspired my creative side. My paintings and
mixed media art help interpret how I perceive Alaska and
what I hold dear. I love embellishing my paintings with
metal leaf, found objects, torn papers, vintage music
paper, and stenciling.

I enjoy developing the process of how my mixed media
evolves. After making several small sketches and settling
on a basic plan, I then paint the background a mottled
color, followed by applying stencils and then gluing torn
papers and metal leaf in random areas. Finally, I paint the
main subject, followed by a thick layer of lacquer to seal
the canvas.

Mixed media has made my paintings more diverse than
just paint. It allows me the freedom to play and explore
textures, colors, and objects that I have collected over the
years in hopes to utilize them in my art somehow.

After positive comments, sales, and successful art shows,
along with this opportunity to show my mixed media art at
Bear Gallery, I decided to continue producing more of
these pieces. I hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I
enjoy creating them. I hope my work successfully exhibits
my feelings for my subjects and you, the viewer, have more
understanding of how I view the world around me.”

-Amy Reisland-Speer

Amy’s work can be seen in the Bear Gallery in her exhibition “Fur, Feathers and Petals” to the Metal on view Friday, November 3rd to Saturday, November 25, 2023, during gallery hours from 12-6 p.m., located at 2300 Airport Way in Fairbanks, AK.

This event is FREE and open to the public thanks to our generous donors and sponsors!