ABOUT ME

Amanda Billing in her Force Majeure design

I'm an artist and actress based in Auckland, New Zealand.

 

When I was a high school teacher, I remember giving one of my students this advice when she wasn't sure which subjects to take:

"Do what you're good at and what you enjoy and you can't go wrong."

Since those days (Christchurch in the year 2000), I've had to make pragmatic decisions about the work I do (we all have bills) but the advice I gave Ursula is something I live by, even more so now than then.

I make a living from creativity and artistic practice, mixing acting work with voice-overs, doing theatre and TV, turning design and photography hobbies into legitimate businesses with room to grow (if I want to invest the time). In my Grey Lynn studio, I take photographs of people and I draw and paint.

This kind of life can be complex; it requires courage; it builds resilience.

At the heart of my way of life are continuous, overlapping projects. Some are "jobs", many are contracts I write myself. All are born of curiosity and most are the result of a bloody-minded determination to reach back into my past and rescue my artistic self.

Acting, photography, painting: they're all ways I that I decide to matter.

xAB