Tye studied Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales majoring in sculpture and then completed a Bachelor of Art Education. She went on to teach Visual Arts and photography for 15 years — all while practising her painting. In 2017, she left teaching to pursue a full-time career as an artist, and now has a studio surrounded by bushland.

By sectioning the view into shapes, Tye depicts an emotional yet fragmented response to her surroundings. The artist is interested in a practice that swings between responding to the world as she experiences it and a creative process that happens outside her conscious awareness. A juxtaposition develops in the artworks, amplified through our engagement with city life, especially one poised between the ocean and bush.

Tye has been a finalist in the Northern Beaches Art Prize 2021, Southern Buoy Landscape Prize 2020, Glover Art Prize 2019, The Fleurieu Art Prize 2018, Mosman Art Prize 2015, and twice winner of the People’s Choice Warringah Art Prize (Northern Beaches Art Prize).

“...for me painting is about escapism and freedom; fueled by music, it is an obsession, a habit, returning each day to do better, to be better... striving to create that something I haven’t yet, something more... something good enough... but without experiences inspired by the magic of the natural and man made world, there wouldn’t be anything to create”
~Amanda Tye