Amanda Besl is a painter and experimental filmmaker living in Buffalo, NY. She has shown widely in New York State and in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Russia. Besl holds an MFA in Painting from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI and a BFA from SUNY Oswego. Her paintings are part of several notable private and public collections including the Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo; Nichido Contemporary, Tokyo, Japan; the Burger Collection, Hong Kong and the Tullman Collection, Chicago. Besl uses natural history as a platform to explore social issues. She was awarded a 2024 NYSCA grant for Temple of Hortus, a botanically inspired installation of 2-d, 3-d, and video work questioning curated and commercial approaches to nature, hybridization, mutation and collection. Besl is represented by Resource Art and her 2022 solo exhibition “Blue Mythologies” at The Raft of Sanity gallery began her foray into experimental filmmaking.