BY SUZY STUMP for WEEKLY VOLCANO 6/20/25 |
Amber McLean’s first real painting—an expressive Buddha—was created for a fundraiser but actually parting with it nearly broke her heart. She donated it to the Peace Out Auction, a benefit organized by Peace Out, the Tacoma-based nonprofit that transforms art into community funding for mental health support and suicide prevention. Her Buddha sold immediately, to her friend Sara. Amber was proud but instantly homesick for her own creation, one that revealed to her a piece of her identity she had not even known was there.
“I must have talked about it a lot,” she says now, surrounded by canvases in various stages of bloom at her Tacoma studio. “A few years later, my husband surprised me with it! He never did tell me how he got it back. Ten years later, I still can’t believe it’s mine again.”
Amber’s relationship with her art is a push and pull between sharing it and wanting to keep it close. Her pieces are so personal, so charged with feeling and rebellion, that each one feels alive. And yet, if you’ve wandered through a Tacoma market or art fair, you’ve probably seen one of her colorful and compelling canvases.
She credits Tacoma itself for feeding her imagination. From alleyway graffiti to sprawling murals and the commanding presence of Mount Rainier, the city’s grit and beauty infuse her brushstrokes. “We’re literally surrounded by breathtaking views to paint,” she says. “My Tacoma paintings? They’re always the first to go. We love our city—it shows.”
Amber’s mind literally works differently than most. She lives with aphantasia, which means she can’t visualize images in her mind, and she also has no inner monologue. Her thoughts arrive as feelings that she has to speak out loud or translate through her hands. Early on, she relied on reference photos—pictures of flowers, cities, mountains. She’d tweak the colors, add her style, but something always felt missing. Then came the day she set the photos aside. She had an old vertical frame with five empty slots and decided to paint exactly what she felt: fists raised for Black Lives Matter, an Earth for peace and climate action, a rainbow for LGBTQIA+ pride, a crowd chanting “No Human Is Illegal on Stolen Land,” and a circle of fierce women symbolizing feminism. She stepped back, saw what she’d done, and said out loud, “Whoa. I did that.” That was the moment when everything clicked.
Since then, she’s trusted her gut more than any sketch. Sometimes an idea strikes and she can’t rest until it’s on canvas. Other times, she just picks up a brush without a plan and watches flowers transform into giant jellyfish or shapes melt into watery dreamscapes. One recent piece, Mt. She-More, was sparked by a photo of Mount Rushmore that annoyed her so deeply she had to speak up. “I looked at it and said, ‘It’s wild we carved four white men into sacred Native land and called them the founding fathers.’” Her husband laughed and said, “I feel a painting coming.” Four hours later, she had reimagined who deserved to be carved into our collective memory.
Amber’s work circles back to the same current: empowerment, water, flowers, protest, healing, and the stubborn hope that the world might have been better if women had been in charge from the beginning. “I love to dream about that,” she says. “A lot of my art reflects that dream.” She wants people to feel that vision vibrating through each canvas. “Empowered. Included. Seen,” she says without hesitation.
It seems to work. Her paintings rarely linger long enough to gather dust. Tacoma’s art lovers know how fast they go. And while she’s proud to see them find new homes, she has her eyes on bigger walls and bigger dreams. “Every time someone buys my art, it means the world to me,” she says, still sounding a little astonished. “Just knowing it’s hanging in someone’s home—wild. And this feature? Also wild. Thank you so much for this.”
What comes next? She’s thinking murals. She’s dreaming of hanging her originals in local shops all over town. And if the right wall comes calling, you can bet she’ll show up with a ladder and her brushes, ready to paint Tacoma’s spirit bigger than ever.
One thing is certain: wherever her vision goes, Amber McLean will paint it boldly, fearlessly, and fully awake to the world she wants to see—one brushstroke at a time.
