Jennifer Newman South African, b. 1961

Artist Biography — Jennifer Newman

(Born 1961, Cape Town, South Africa)

Jennifer Newman’s practice is grounded in geological exploration and contemplative inquiry, using the earth itself as both medium and metaphor. Her work emerges from a profound engagement with her family’s history—forebears who left Europe for Cape Town in the late 1800s and again after the First World War. Both of her maternal great-grandfathers chose to settle on Robben Island in the early 1900s, a site later known worldwide for Nelson Mandela’s 27-year imprisonment. Its legacy of endurance, forgiveness, and transformation forms a powerful backdrop to Newman’s artistic universe.

Early in her career, Newman explored the cartography and psychological landscape of Robben Island, seeking to understand how land, trauma, migration, and identity intertwine across generations. Over time, her focus has shifted inward: towards discovering her own narrative—the story that is hers to tell—through materiality, memory, and process.

Trained in Ceramic Design and Sculpture at the Witwatersrand Technikon (now the University of Johannesburg) between 1980 and 1982, Newman developed a deep sensitivity to form, texture, and the alchemical behaviour of raw materials. This foundation evolved into a mixed-media practice defined by the layering of minerals, oils, pigments, patinated precious metals, and crushed semi-precious stones.

Her surfaces function as archaeologies of time: strata that reveal and conceal, capturing suspended moments and buried truths. Newman seeks what she calls “the gasp”—that instant of emotional recognition when viewers feel drawn in, compelled to sense the history embedded in the surface, perhaps even tempted to touch the work.

Newman’s artworks have been exhibited internationally and are held in collections across the globe, including private collectors, luxury hotels, embassies, superyachts, cruise liners, and corporate institutions. Her ability to merge elemental materiality with contemporary storytelling gives her work a distinctive resonance across diverse audiences.

Jennifer:

“Through time and pressure beauty is created, we mine the soul to find the precious things. We have to bring it to the surface. Life refines and polishes our history and the choice we make. Our layers and compartments are filled with experiences and memories. My love of earth and clay has influenced all my art in the use of texture and form.”