Amadour is a Nevada-born contemporary artist, musician, and writer working between Los Angeles, New York, and Reno. Their ongoing bodies of work include “Nevada Proscenium” and “California Incline,” two painting series rooted in the landscapes and architecture of the American West. “Nevada Proscenium” examines Comstock Lode mining structures and the overlooked Mexican and Latin American labor embedded within their histories. Amadour is currently developing “The Mapes Suite,” a multidisciplinary project and forthcoming 2027–2029 exhibition at the Nevada State Museum centered on Reno’s demolished Mapes Hotel and the city’s civic memory. As a singer-songwriter, Amadour creates cinematic orchestral pop. Their single “Angel Eyes (You Are Watching Me)” was recorded with the Pannonia Film Orchestra in Budapest, Hungary, extending the landscapes, histories, and visual language of their paintings into orchestral ballads and sound. For more on their work please visit: www.amadour.com
1. What is the first thing that burned you?
The Nevada sun. I was born in Sparks and raised in Reno, and I think I understood brightness before I understood almost anything else. The high desert sky over the Great Basin stretches forever. I grew up beneath lenticular clouds that look like UFOs, with Lake Tahoe and Mount Rose over the horizon and the light revealing the Truckee River below. The Nevada sun exposes everything: the mountains, the asphalt, your skin, the buildings. There is nowhere to hide. I think I have spent much of my life trying to recreate that sensation in paintings and music.
2. What do you smell like?
I smell like “Serotonial” by Kalit, which I discovered a few years ago at a shop called Heaven Scent in Oslo. I wear it pretty frequently. On special occasions, I always go for “Quartier Latin” by Memo Paris. It is my favorite. I remember walking into Galeries Lafayette and smelling it for the first time when I was a student studying medieval art history in Paris. I also love Memo’s “Granada.” I love “For Rest” by Nonfiction, too. I bought it at one of their stores in Seoul, and I remember walking through the palaces afterward and feeling like a princess. I think I remember places through how I smelled when I was there.
3. What do you feel is more true: every crazy person is a movie, every movie is a crazy person, or neither?
I think every crazy person is a movie. I love cinematic experiences. Today, I was driving from Lake Tahoe back to Los Angeles, and the people in front of me kept speeding up to 90 miles per hour and then slowing down to 60 on these one-lane roads through the desert. I kept thinking, why are you doing this to me? I tried to keep my distance, but I think they wanted me to race them. At the same time, I was playing “Someone Like You” by Adele and crying. It all felt incredibly cinematic. So maybe I was the movie.
4. How does your heart feel?
My heart feels like it is in its own little world, like a daydream. This morning I woke up hugging my pillow and, for a minute, imagined it was my future partner. I started wondering what it would feel like to wake up beside him. Maybe he got up before me, or maybe I slept in. I just let myself fantasize for a little while.
Later, I was driving alone through Bridgeport, California, looking across the fields toward the Sierra Nevada, near where Yosemite begins, and I kept thinking how beautiful it was and how much I would like to share that moment with someone. Maybe I like the fantasy of imagining someone beside me. Then a thunderstorm came over US 395 and rain started pouring against the windshield. The wipers were moving back and forth, and I opened the windows just enough to smell the rain. Everything felt magical. I think my heart is always imagining who might be there with me someday.
5. What was it like to ride in your parents’ car as a kid? What about now (or the equivalent feeling)?
As a child, I had a bad habit of putting stickers all over the car windows, and for some reason my parents let me do it. I would never allow a child to do that in my car. I remember having what felt like a hundred stickers covering my window and looking out through them. I also remember the music. I listened to Queen and Frank Sinatra with my dad, who drove a blue Cadillac Eldorado.
Now it depends on which parent’s car I am in. My stepdad also drives Cadillacs. His electric LYRIQ smells incredibly clean, and I love being inside it, it’s like a space shuttle. He also has a new white Corvette Stingray, which is much more fun but I’m not allowed to drive it… yawn. My mom drives a Prius with a UCLA Mom license plate frame. Being in her car makes me feel like I am going to school again. She also does not drive on freeways, which I find kind of adorable, instead we take the back roads.
6. Does your misery love company?
Absolutely, it does. But I think my misery likes attention even more than company. Sometimes when someone acts out or becomes frustrated with me, I find myself wondering if they just want to be recognized. Maybe they want someone to say, I see you. I notice you. I think misery can be a way of asking to be seen. I do not know. Maybe I am too empathetic.
7. What does a potato chip mean to you? What does it taste like?
Whenever I think of a potato chip, I think of Vancouver, Canada, and specifically ketchup chips. My friends there introduced them to me because they are such a Canadian thing, and now they are something I occasionally crave. Then I found ketchup-flavored chips at Trader Joe’s in Los Angeles and immediately sent my friends a photo. They responded, “Oh my gosh, Canada is invading the U.S. with ketchup chips.” So I suppose a potato chip tastes like ketchup and reminds me of my friends in Canada.
8. What does touching feel like?
Touching feels romantic. Doesn’t it? To me, it feels like Rocío Dúrcal’s song “La Guirnalda.” It feels like meeting a handsome man with a boat and being a coquette, pretending not to notice him. Then he takes your hand, brings you onto the boat, and asks about your life. You tell him your entire life story, and he takes you sailing toward Puerto Vallarta. You are just out there on the water together.
9. Do you belong to and on Earth?
absolutely belong to Earth. I am a Taurus, and I am obsessed with trees, especially quaking aspens and bristlecone pines. I love being surrounded by mountains. It feels like being nestled into a little cocoon. I also think about all of the ancient and Indigenous peoples who have been stewards of the land, and I feel like I want to do my part to take care of it too. In that way, I feel very much like I am here. Although my Moon is in Gemini and my head is in the clouds and the sky all the time, I think being grounded and chill is the best way to be.
10. What is your first memory, and what does it mean to your work?
My first memory is sitting on the gray carpet of my bedroom floor and playing with a Tarzan and Jane plastic toy from McDonald’s. Jane was wearing a yellow dress, and I remember being completely fascinated by her. I thought she was so beautiful. I loved her dress and, in some way, I think I saw myself in her.
I also have brief memories of our hound dog, Barney, standing near the front door with his long ears. Apparently, my first word was “luna,” which means moon in Spanish. I was pointing up at the moon on the driveway when I said it.
I think it is very clear what all of this has to do with my work as an artist. My first memories are of a beautiful woman in a yellow dress, a hound dog, and the moon. I guess I have always been a fancy bitch.
