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Amber Stokie is an Adelaide based visual artist known for her figurative works on paper and canvas. Stokie holds a BA in Visual Art (drawing) from the University of Ballarat and recently completed a Master of Fine Art degree with Distinction at RMIT University, Melbourne. Stokie often shifts between drawing and painting to describe what’s going on in her world, and society.

Stokie's art making process creates richly layered works imbued with the artist's memories and understanding of how she fits in the world around her and the challenges that contemporary society presents. Emotive responses are the catalyst to transform interior scenes and landscapes, often merged, to imaginative and psychological paintings. This process results in colourful and often ambiguous paintings that oscillate between gestural abstraction and figuration. Freedom and play are important in this process therefore Stokie avoids working with a specific subject for too long, however regular reoccurring themes in her work such as diversity, togetherness and collectivity remain constant.

“I often work with multiple and/or repeated forms in attempt to talk about collectivity and diversity. I like to keep them open and abstract in terms of what they are and have the viewer interpret the shapes for themselves. Usually, they are suggestive of human forms, objects, or plant life. As I progress with a work and clarify my ideas the original shapes become increasingly blurred or obscure.”

Stokie has been exhibiting regularly in group and solo exhibitions since 2009. From 2006 to 2009 she established and curated regular exhibitions at Artasis Gallery (ARI) in Richmond. Throughout this period, she also completed several private and corporate commissions and participated in live painting performances at venues that included the National Gallery of Victoria and Chapter House in Melbourne, Vic. She has been a finalist in the Williamstown, Stanthorpe and Blacktown prizes and has won “people’s choice” at AGENDO emerging art award. In 2016 she was recipient of the ADFAS Young Artist Award for her RMIT MFA work, the next year she successfully applied for a solo exhibition at the Wodonga Public Art Gallery. In 2019 she was commissioned to perform a key work “Are You An Artist Too” from her Masters studies at the 2019 Montsalvat Arts Centre in Melbourne.