A Painter, A Poet, A Portrait Maker: Featured Artist Amber Langanke
There are so many different shades of “art” in the world, and they don’t always lean to the sonic side of things. Visual artists are something that I have appreciated and respected for a long while. I spent the better part of my high school days in the art wing of my high school in the dark room, spray painting graffiti murals, or printmaking on the schools press. It’s something that has always called to me, and despite moving away from the arts from a career or schooling standpoint, I still have a deep love for eye catching drawings, paintings, photography and so on. Amber Langanke is such an artist. She has a style that is realistic, but is unique to her own brush or pen. Beautiful lines when she is only utilizing black and when she infuses color into her work, its brilliant.
There is something relaxed and comforting in how she creates and it really draws me in. So much so, I asked her a few questions and to be the very first of our non-music featured artists here on Red Line Roots. You can read on below and check out Amber and her work here: http://www.amberlonganchor.com/art.htm
RLR: So, give us a bit of your backstory. Have you always been an artist at heart?
AL: Oh, there’s not much backstory. My childhood was unusual in that it was happy. I have no trauma from then to thank for my creativity, just cabinets upon cabinets in our house that were dedicated to every kind of craft supply you can imagine. Wonderful things can be said about my parents’ love for me based on the memory that the rest of the basement remained unfinished while the art area continuously grew. When my father was my age, he was discouraged from making a career out of his amazing, untapped ability, which must play a large part in both their enormous support for tapping mine. With the amount of faith that they and my brother have always had in me, it was impossible not to embrace the artist at heart.
RLR: What is your preference to capture in your work? Landscapes, peoples, animals? I love your portrait work…aside from being realistic, you seem to be able to capture a person’s “being” in your art.
AL: To be told that I’ve captured the essence of someone through my art is one of the most fulfilling emotional connections I can feel. I also think it’s one of the greatest compliments I can give, and is what encourages me most to keep at portraiture. When it comes to replicating, I’m drawn to subjects with a soul. When being original as possible, I like to use any and all kinds of reference, but now that I think about it, I do almost always incorporate a person or animal in there no matter what. Landscapes have always kind of bored me. I painted a beach one once and had to add a dinosaur in there to like it.
RLR: You are also a poet, a multi-artistic person, tell a little bit about that.
AL: I mentioned that my father was an artist, but I got a writing gene from my mother. Like dad, she’s never done anything with it by a career standard but she touches lives with well-written, heartfelt letters. While we were living far apart, she and I became penpals. I am always writing but poetry is the only genre of it that I’ve published. I handbind my two books – one silly, one not so silly – from start to finish. I know this article will headline me as a visual artist, but to be honest, I enjoy the writing far more than the painting. It’s less limiting while trying to manifest what’s in the mind and the actual act of painting can be laborious. It’s all fun in the end, but I feel like I express myself better through poetic metaphor than through paint or even straightforward talk.
RLR: What else would you want people to know about you as an artist, or just a person?
AL: I suppose I want people to know how challenging it is to feel 
humble while trying to get one’s name out as an artist. We live in a day and age where there are so many talented people that make up an inevitably large art market, which outnumbers the people who can or are willing to pay for it. There are many steps you can’t take toward making a living off of art or music without some shameless self-promotion. I fear it comes off narcissistically and don’t even want to do it, but imagine the gratification if you could monetarily support yourself with your most interesting thoughts. I’ve illustrated dreams I’ve had, people I intimately know, I reword my journal entries to rhyme and share them with the world, not for the spotlight but because I want to keep receiving the time and resources to work on the never-ending list of projects I can’t possibly finish before I die. And if no one shared there’d be no art or music or poetry for those who don’t make it. It’s a bummer we can’t afford to give away the most beautiful sides of ourselves for free.
On that note, I will self-promote. I advise anyone interested (or not interested) in my work, that it won’t all be the same. I’ve got a recognizable style probably, but it’s not permanent. Right now I’m working on a science-fiction novel that will be unlike my poetry, and a series of collages that will be unlike my paintings. I hope to never stagnate. An artist needs to keep his own interest in his art to keep making it.
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Again, check out Amber’s poetry and art on her website, commission a piece for your home of loved ones or a pet, or a scene from a memorable event…and support local art in ALL forms.
