Born Quinter, KS, 1979
Lives and works in Seattle, WA
Amanda Manitach is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist, writer, and curator based in Seattle, WA. The daughter of an evangelical minister, she spent her childhood in Kansas and Texas drawing on the backs of church bulletins during long Sunday sermons, and went on to earn a degree in literature from Oral Roberts University. She eventually dropped the faith, but not the pencil.
Manitach’s visual art blends her passion for drawing and language in large-scale works on paper and other media that play with the plasticity and power of language, where pieces are infused with jarring poetics, provocation, and the occasional anti-patriarchal Freudian slip.
In addition to visual art, Manitach has worked extensively in arts journalism, with seven years as visual arts editor at City Arts Magazine, and currently as editor in chief at Public Display Art. She has co-founded and co-directed multiple artist-run galleries in Seattle, and served as curator at Seattle University’s Hedreen Gallery from 2013-2015. In 2023, after completing a four-month artist residency at Recology King County, Manitach joined the organization as co-manager of its Artist in Residence program. She is represented by Winston Wächter Fine Art in Seattle and New York.
Photo by James Harnois