Amanda Lesley King

BEECH ISLAND, SC - Amanda Lesley King, 58, passed away Friday, October 25, 2024.

Amanda Lesley King adored ponies, horses, and all animals from an early age. She rode throughout her youth in the New Forest in the county of Hampshire, United Kingdom, where she had a succession of ponies: Dolphin, Rivers, and Final. Amanda’s passion for horses led her to the equestrian disciplines of eventing, which she studied under many well-known trainers.

Born on the ninth of April, 1966, in Lymington, Hampshire, she is preceded in death by her mother, Carolyn Virginia King (née Bell). Amanda is survived by her partner-wife of twenty-five years, Sarah (Sally) E. Burns of Beech Island, South Carolina; her father Richard King, Christchurch, Dorset, UK; her sister Catherine King of Tiverton, Devon, UK; her half-brother David John King and half-sister Emma Young, both of Christchurch, Dorset, UK; her former husband, Nathan Selles-Alvarez of Brooklyn, New York; her niece, Ellen E. Burns of Houston, Texas; and Ellen’s mother, Laura Burns of Corrales, New Mexico. 

After several early years at Ibsley Manor Farm, where her mother kept a hundred chickens to sell organic eggs, Amanda moved to her childhood home at Tyrells Way, Burley, in Hampshire, with her ponies and beloved pets, including Cindy, the black Labrador crossbreed, who was as tall sitting as Amanda was standing when Amanda chose her from the rescue. Amanda always delighted in sharing pictures and videos of extreme equine athletic feats. Among her favorites were Red Rum running in the Grand National steeplechase and the pony-horse Stroller, ridden by a distant cousin, Marion Coakes, competing in the Mexico Olympics (second place) and the Hickstead Derby.

A visual artist, Amanda received a Bachelor (Honours) of Fine Arts – Painting from Newcastle Polytechnic (now called University of Northumbria at Newcastle) and was awarded a Master of Fine Arts in 1994 from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Amanda maintained her artist’s studio in Fort Green, Brooklyn, throughout the 1990s. She was noted for her dramatic, large-format paintings, which in her early work featured human figures dynamically relating within a closed space. Her later work was situated in more open space and characterized by expressive, gestural brush strokes. To learn more about Amanda’s artistic ethic, please read the essay written by Amanda included below.

In the early 2000s, Amanda and Sally moved to Slate Hill, Orange County, New York, where they established a farm for Amanda to re-train off-the-track thoroughbreds for show jumping and cross-country jumping. She enjoyed riding the Hudson and Delaware Valley countrysides with her many equestrian friends. Amanda particularly loved mares, could handle the scariest ride, and had a way with difficult horses. She nurtured many beloved horses and other animals and her loving care was reciprocated, doubly so by Chesca, her little black-and-white border collie; Olive, her rescued runt-of-the litter pit bull mix; and Jethro cat, her sable snow-shoe stray.

In 2017, after many years in the icy winters of New York, Amanda decamped to Aiken, South Carolina, with six horses, three dogs, and three cats, soon to be followed by her wife and art. She established a farm in the Fox Hollow equestrian community, where she especially loved her European-style stable. She thrilled to Aiken’s mild winter weather, terrain reminiscent of the UK’s New Forest, and vibrant horse community. 

Amanda will be remembered for her irreverent sense of humor that served her well through her determined fight with cancer. She was grateful to her gynecological oncology team and supporting providers at Augusta University Health and her friends in the Fox Hollow community for their caring and generous support throughout her illness. She died in intensive care, sense of humor intact, on October 25th, 2024, in Augusta, Georgia.

A memorial service is planned for February 1 on Zoom. The Zoom link to attend the service is: https://nyu.zoom.us/j/6198965136?omn=96145564254. 

In lieu of flowers, memorial gifts may be directed to Aiken FOTAS (Friends of the Animal Shelter at www.fotasaiken.org), Hannah’s Willberry Wonder Pony Charity (www.willberrywonderpony.org), or the charity of your choice.

SHELLHOUSE-RIVERS FUNERAL HOME, INC., 715 E. PINE LOG RD., AIKEN, SC 29803.

Artist’s Statement: Amanda’s work is best described in her own words (from 2000-01). Taken together her work, and her explanation of it, communicate her complex and unflinching look at life:

My work focuses on humans and animals in action and relations with the aim of capturing and expressing complex meaning. It is essentially psychological and the process of making it is intuitive. The meanings it expresses or embodies are more complicated and difficult than I am able to express in words. 

Having said this, I can discuss, in broad outline, what my work “is about”…. The dialogue of art, artist and viewer is my work’s ultimate exploration.

Generally my work is concerned with two themes, which are historically significant in art and central in the present-day exploration of meaning. These themes are gesture and the figure/ground relationship.

Gesture: The presentation of figures in my work focuses upon expression through demeanor, posture, movement, expression that I refer to collectively as “gesture.” Gesture conveys, intentionally or not, meaning from the gesturing individual. We “read” and understand gesture as a whole, in gestalt, supplying in the course of that reading our own gloss of interpretation. Successfully reading gesture – by which I mean gathering generally the meaning emanating from the individual as it relates to that individual – involves understanding of culture, verbal and non-verbal vocabulary, psychology and kinesthesiology of the subject. In addition, reading gesture in a visual artistic presentation may call upon the viewer to understand something about the artist, and the artist’s context.

My paintings and drawings are, in effect, psychological portraits which do not necessarily illustrate physiological features as such but instead express complex and often contradictory meaning which begins somewhere deep inside….

Current-day themes about the psychological in itself and of human and animal conditions and relationships apart from that which is instrumental or economic allow us to explore gesture in a way previously not available to the artist. It is no accident that just as we have abandoned the horse as an essential means of production and transportation, the general public, with popular culture like the book and related movie “The Horse Whisperer,” is prepared to contemplate communication of and with the horse on its own terms. The presence of these issues in present-day discourse and the circumstances of art production which no longer require that art function to exalt and reinforce specific status relationships frees us to investigate meaning-making outside of hierarchies, or meaning for those not privileged within those hierarchies. It is no longer incumbent upon us to portray domestic tranquility and mask conflict. Gesture that often has been used to deflect attention from underlying strife now may be used to explore that strife.

While it would be folly to presume that our own time does not have social ordering that channels our work and delimits the meaning which we can explore, we have been released to expressionistic meaning-making from a wider range of perspectives. My work explores such expression.

Figure/Ground: Every expression is interpreted against the context in which it appears. In visual art, context in the most immediate sense is the ground in which the figure appears. This is the context over which the artist has most control. Context also includes the circumstances in which the artist produced the work and in which the viewer views the work.

So, for example, in the “horse paintings” of George Stubbs, we may see the horse against the ground of a scene from 18th Century life or, as the famous portrait of Whistlejacket, against a neutral background which serves to emphasize the beauty and dynamism of the animal. In both instances, Stubbs worked for patrons who sought to memorialize their families, the conditions of their lives and their relationship to an animal of great value and beauty. Fortunately for us, in the pictures with neutral background, Stubbs is particularly concerned with rendering the identity of the animal, both in its breed and its individuality, presumably because that horse represents, in the eyes of men, a unique and valuable contribution to equine development.

Until recently, the visual context of most of my painting has been architectural or natural – interior spaces or terrain, vegetation and weather. The background is recognizable in itself but allegorical in reference to the figure. For example, one painting entitled “Final” (now part of a private collection in New York) depicts a horse. He stands head down moving toward the viewer, his bright chestnut coat, blazing red against the swirling grays of sky and earth. The painting was inspired by a snapshot of a horse whom I knew well, taken of him in his pasture on the day that this then-elderly horse was euthanized. The snapshot scene is idyllic, showing the horse blazing bright chestnut against the lush green of the pasture; it could be an ad for polychrome photo prints. The painting was my effort to encompass my sense of this horse in the totality of his life, against what was about to be done to him as well as against the prospect of an unassisted death, and to capture his trusting innocence and my psychological state about his end. Small and spirited, he was an enthusiastic, courageous, sure-footed, loyal and a completely trustworthy sport horse. Only by rendering the background gray and stormy, could I suggest to the viewer that this was not an ordinary moment of pastural tranquility. The painting is a presentation of the horse’s “thereness,” and a recognition that, despite the continued physical presence of the body, in moments the spirit will no longer be “there” which, in this artist’s view, represents a profound loss.

The problem of rendering difficult and painful psychological meaning with paintings that seem to take ordinary subjects in ordinary contexts is obvious. The viewer may be led by the surface image, for example of apparent or relative tranquility, to a meaning which is contrary to the psychological complexity of the rendering. This is the fundamental deception of psychological issues – what is on the surface rarely captures what is going on.

To some extent, I have addressed this problem in time honored ways through multiple images and by titling the work in a manner that invites the viewer to contemplate the complexities that I was contemplating when I produced it. The sequence of drawings entitled “Threshing Floor” presents images of a horse on the ground or rising unsteadily from the ground. They were inspired by a period of days during which I remained by the side of a horse who was in his death throes. The series of drawings (which need not be viewed in any specific order) shows the horse struggling to keep his head up, trying unsteadily to rise and collapsed in exhaustion. The title of the sequence refers allegorically to the reaper and literally to the thrashing of the horse as he struggled with his bulk and weakness, in his unaccustomed and dangerous prone position. In the context of my overall work, including the painting of ”Final,” these renderings speak to the agonistic nature of life and the complexities of mortality and thus human’s duty to animal. 

Images from Amanda’s life and work can be viewed in a slide show posted with this obituary at Shellhouse Rivers Funeral Home of Aiken, SC: https://www.shellhouseriversfuneralhome.com/ 

 In-person viewing of Amanda’s art may be arranged through her estate. 

All text and images are copyrighted 2025 to the Estate of Amanda Lesley King.