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AMANDA WACHOB, OIL ON CANVAS, 10X12 INCHES, 2002

Buffalo-based artist Amanda Wachob got the inspiration for her painting The Gold Bug from Edgar Allen Poe’s story of the same name. Wachob’s interpretation of the story’s central idea: “genius and insanity are virtually indistinguishable without a point of reference.” Wachob, a self-described surrealist, claims that a large amount of her work explores this concept. Much of her work includes subliminal imagery, she says she doesn’t make conscious choices as to what to create, and sometimes her paintings are reflections of daydreams.
Wachob has shown her work in 16 exhibits throughout the country and in one in Italy since her graduation from SUNY Purchase in 1998. She has been published in Juxtapoz magazine and Flash Magazine, and she won in the 2002 Mark Ryden Meat Contest. Her work is presently on view in galleries in Seattle, Buffalo, Brooklyn, and Detroit. Wachob recently opened her own tattoo studio, Blue Moon Tattoo, in Buffalo. She can be contacted at amandawachob@hotmail.com. Featured as part of a current exhibit at Roq la Rue Gallery in Washington, DC, until August 8, Wachob joins other artists in a themed show of dark fairytales, supernatural myths, and legends from around the world. She says, “I can’t stop painting. It is who I am.”