Amanda Jephson
Amanda was born in Johannesburg and grew up in an artistic family.
She practiced art from a very young age and attended the Nina Campbell-Quine Art Studio, and the Johannesburg National School of Arts where she matriculated in Art.
Her art career has involved various diverse interests and applications, encompassing fine art, lecturing in history of art and culture, art articles and book reviews, illustration and graphic art, murals and decorative furniture painting, landscape garden design and construction, adult and child art teaching, and psychological art therapy.
Amanda works in oil and acrylic painting, the graphic media of pencil, pen, charcoal and
pastel, intaglio printmaking, and in paper sculpture.
Currently she is making decorative hand-painted paper sculptures inspired by her love of ballet, costumes of the Ballet Russes, and the French Baroque and Rococo periods.
Works include playful and whimsical cat and animal characters dressed in costumes inspired by the 18th century. The sculptures are entirely made out of paper which she has hand painted.
Education and experience
In 1979 she worked in advertising as a graphic designer and story- board illustrator in Johannesburg and Cape Town. In the same year she had a solo exhibition of drawings and mixed media works at Gallery 709 in Cape Town.
1983 she graduated with a BA Fine Art at Michaelis Art School, University of Cape Town. She majored in printmaking and etching under Dutch printmaker, Jules Van der Vyver. In 1989 she was awarded a MA Fine Art at UCT for her dissertation on black South African contemporary art.
From 1984 to 1991 she followed an academic career and was a lecturer in Cultural History of
Western Europe and History of Art at UCT. During this time she was also a theatre judge for the AA Vita Awards.
In 1992 she studied landscape technology at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology and graduated with a National Diploma in Landscape Technology (Cum Laude). She ran her own landscape design and construction business for 15 years in Cape Town and co-owned and managed a retail nursery in Observatory, Cape Town.
In 2008 she moved to Tierfontein, outside Baardskeerdersbos where she and her husband live and raise numerous farm animals, have a plant nursery and breed Burmese cats She works from her farm studio and gallery and is a founder member of the Baardskeerdersbos Art Route where she has exhibited consistently since 2008.
In 2020 she was awarded a BA Honours in Counselling Psychology (Cum Laude) and is currently doing her Masters in Psychology with an interest in the practice of art in counselling psychology.
From 1979 to the present Amanda has exhibited her work in various galleries in the Western Cape.
She has works in private collections in South Africa, Scotland, New Zealand, Australia and the USA.
