Amanda Jones’ Layered & Emotive Art Practice
From daily diary entries to paint on canvas, the artwork of Sydney-based artist, poet and filmmaker Amanda Jones is a vibrant combination of colour, words and play.
Words: Cardia Speziale I Photography: Hande Renshaw
Studio details.
‘The subject I’m most captivated by is play… it’s art, so you might as well have some fun,’ says Amanda Jones.
‘Dance was my first creative medium. I trained in contemporary dance and choreography until I was 21. It has been the window I view all my creative work through ever since.’
“The process of art making is so soul enlivening that it almost feels forbidden, in the sense that the way it fits with my being so perfectly is too wonderful to be that simple and obvious. Creative art is spiritual work, and my soul is on each canvas.”
‘In my mosaic creative career I have experienced many creative forms, but the way people respond to words is uniquely instant and visceral.’
‘There is something exponential about words combined with colour; it’s another way of showing you its attitude, I guess.’
In 2021, Amanda Jones published a book called Diary of a Freelancer –handwritten scribbles all taken from her real life diary as a freelance film-maker.
Amanda Jones leans into the experience of play when painting.
Amanda Jones is an artist, poet and filmmaker who lives in the Northern Beaches of Sydney. Following the success of her 2021 book, titled Diary of a Freelancer, which featured handwritten musings from her real-life journal at the time, Amanda thew a party where she exhibited 18 large paintings with her favourite pieces — all which sold out with 24 hours. It was then that Amanda started her art practice, and she hasn’t looked back since.
Starting out in the fashion industry where she learned illustration, colour theory and design through a sartorial lens, Amanda took her creative curiosity to Europe and began trialling different mediums. Today, her work sits with collectors all over the world, including the UK, US and Germany.
‘After a toxic fashion internship and a dramatic “I’m quitting my job and going to Europe” moment, I started out on my own, finding work using whatever creative skill someone would hire me for,’ she says. ‘I learnt a lot about the labour of real creative work — how to get an invoice paid and how to be calm when a client is not happy […] then one day someone put a camera in my hands and that was it, I was a filmmaker.’
With the same open-mindedness to creative pursuits, Amanda began painting her poetry just over a year ago, finding ‘masters and muses’ to guide and mentor her along the way, as well as challenging herself with experimentation through play.
Like so many of the artists we speak to about the beginning of their commercial work, Amanda was surprised and delighted when people started purchasing her art. ‘It honestly knocked me over when people started buying the paintings,’ she says. ‘It’s been so rewarding to establish a personal art practice and I’m currently working on my fourth collection.’
Leaning into the experience of play, Amanda’s process begins with a kind of finger painting — mixing down the paint, pouring it straight on to the canvas, and then pushing it all around with her hands until she finds a shape or specific colour combination that resonates. ‘It might be from a street sign, a jacket on an 80s sitcom, or the way the light refracts from saltwater – I’ll get an idea stuck in my head and it won’t leave my until I find it on the canvas.’
Having had such a diverse career exploring many creative mediums, Amanda reflects on the impact of words and ‘uniquely instant and visceral’ human experience to words as an artform; ‘I’m a lover of distilled words. The shape of the word is just as important to me as its meaning,’ reflects Amanda. ‘We can speak with different emphasis and expression, I like to think I can show you an attitude with how a word is written.’
Twelve months on from commencing her ‘dream of all dreams’ job of being an artist, Amanda is looking forward to releasing a new collection in April, titled Time Is My Friend. Learn more about her work and keep up to date with information about the collection here.
‘Seinfeld is my biggest influence at the moment. It could be the raw film footage and fashion of New York in the 90s, it could be the comedy of the mundane, or it could be the joy I get from the extreme physicality of Kramer and Elaine.’
‘Creative art is spiritual work, and my soul is on each canvas.’
‘It honestly knocked me over when people started buying the paintings.’
Amanda Jones’s first book, titled Diary of a Freelancer was published in 2021.