Amber Wilkerson

Amber Wilkerson is an illustrator and designer originally from Alabama now living in Southern California. She is studying Illustration at Long Beach City College and hopes to attend Otis College in the future. She creates illustrations and designs inspired by the anime and comics she grew up loving. Amber also paints surrealist pop art based on her many interests and years of bartending. She runs the online shop Bambi Hyde Art Studio. There her art and designs can be found in many forms from stickers to hand made sketchbooks. The name Bambi Hyde is the combination of an old nickname from collage and her high school poetry pen name. When she’s not creating art she can be found watching old Batman cartoons with her dog, Jimi Hendrix.

Artist Statement

My work is a mix of traditional and digital. As much as I enjoy the quick communication that digital allows for, my first love in art is ink. I love ink in all its forms; pen and ink, markers, printmaking. I enjoy the properties of ink and how they enhance my work. My art is primarily in a CMYK palette to ensure consistency across all mediums.

I’ve also been more into physical things and ownership in the digital age of subscriptions. I want to give people tangible things through my art. Something they can hold and can’t be taken from them.

I do art because I feel empty without it. What I want other people to get from my art is happiness; enjoying the beauty in life and other cultures, introducing them to something new or reminding them of something they use to love. I want my art to be a way to add beauty to something mundane; like having a beautiful well crafted notebook to jot down notes, or adding stickers to a boring laptop case to personalize it. People can use my art as a way to express their own personality and to add a bright spot to an every growing grey and beige world.

The ideas I explore are how to combine typography, anime, western comics, and vintage aesthetics. For example the main imagery I use are my dog, Jimi, Japanese oni masks, girls with horns, and biblically accurate angels. I also use a lot of drips for the texture and to give my art a sense of anxiety, like the world is melting away right in front of you so you have to enjoy it now.

I consider myself a pop artist with elements of surrealism. Pop artist because I am mostly influenced by anime and comics, and the surrealism would be from the drips, floating heads, flowers coming out of people, and split skulls.

My inspiration is Joelle Jones for her line work and the way she uses inks and the blacks of her work. Her comic pages look complete without colors added and its a level of mastery I strive for in my work. For color and style it’s Audra Auclair. She also is heavily influenced by Japanese culture. I like how her works feels appreciative and fresh. My subject influence would be Janet Hill. I like the fun and whimsy in her paintings. How they feel grounded in the real world but still separate.

I’ve spent most of my adult life as a bartender and I do enjoy the labels and packaging of alcohol, its something I incorporate into my own art and could see myself doing in the future. I hope to expand to apparel in the near future. I want to provide a sustainable and affordable way to be fashionable and get my designs out there.