Lorna Scheepers

Lorna Scheepers is a South African contemporary artist known for expressive landscape paintings that explore memory, nature and the inner life. Based in Somerset West in the Western Cape, she creates atmospheric works in acrylic and charcoal that move between recognisable landscapes and imagined natural worlds.

Mountains, water, flowers and organic forms recur throughout her paintings, but Scheepers is not interested in recording a landscape exactly as it appears. Instead, she uses it to express a mood, memory or emotional state. Familiar elements are reworked through colour, layered marks and shifts in scale, allowing the external landscape to become a reflection of human experience.

Her intuitive painting process begins with an open canvas rather than a fixed outcome. A photograph or loose drawing may provide the first point of departure, but each composition develops through experimentation. Forms are added, obscured and redrawn until the painting arrives at its own balance between observation, memory and invention.

Scheepers’s paintings can be contemplative and quietly dreamlike or exuberant with colour and growth. Across these different moods, her work returns to the resilience of nature and its ability to mirror cycles of change, stillness and renewal.

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Lorna Scheepers was born in South Africa in 1967 and is a dual citizen of South Africa and the United States. She is now based in Somerset West, where she works as a full-time contemporary artist.  Although Scheepers initially hoped to become an architect, she began studying art at the age of 29. She completed her Visual Communication training at the Open Window Art Academy in Pretoria in 1999. Her education introduced her to a broad range of media and visual disciplines, providing the foundation for a practice that has continued to change and develop. A move to the United States in 2015 marked an important turning point in her career. Living between two countries exposed her to contrasting environments and encouraged her to pursue painting professionally. These experiences continue to shape her interest in belonging, memory and the emotional associations we form with particular landscapes.

Scheepers works primarily in acrylic and charcoal on canvas. Her paintings are representational but frequently incorporate abstraction, altered colour and imagined elements. Working intuitively, she allows the image to evolve through repeated layers of painting, drawing and revision. The visible interplay between fluid colour and charcoal line gives her work a distinctive sense of movement and depth. Nature serves as both subject and metaphor. Mountains, gardens, flowers, trees and bodies of water are used to consider the passing of time, personal change and the endurance of the human spirit. Her poetic artwork titles extend these ideas, offering an emotional point of entry without prescribing a single interpretation. Scheepers draws inspiration from artists including Odilon Redon, Gustav Klimt, Paul Gauguin, Joseph Stella and David Hockney. Their approaches to colour, symbolism and the imaginative possibilities of nature can be felt in her own painterly language. She also admires South African landscape artist JH Pierneef for his ability to convey the country’s landscape through light and colour.

Her selected exhibitions include The Emergent Garden: The Art of Spring at Gallery 1070 in Chicago in 2017; The Water Between Us during Miami Art Week in 2018; and More Is More in Miami in 2019. Since returning to South Africa, her work has appeared in exhibitions including FYNbos and Tales from the Shore in Stilbaai and Just a Little Slice, Please at RK Contemporary in Riebeek Kasteel..

Scheepers’s paintings have been acquired by collectors in South Africa, the United States, Britain, Ireland, Germany, France and Angola. She has also completed commissions for Stellenbosch University, iThemba LABS and several South African schools. 

Through her work, Scheepers invites us to look beyond the physical landscape and consider the memories, emotions and personal histories held within it.

Selected Exhibitions

2026
Group exhibition ROOTED at StateoftheART, Stanford, Western Cape

2025
Group exhibition - Connect through Colour, The Artists Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2024
Group exhibition - Just A Little Slice, Please, RK Contemporary, Riebeek Kasteel, South Africa

2023
Group Exhibition - Tales From The Shore, Stilbaai Galery, Stilbaai, South Africa
Group Exhibition - FYNbos, Stilbaai Galery, Stilbaai, South Africa

2019 
Group Exhibition - More is more, D|A|C, Miami, FL, USA

2018 
Group Exhibition - The Water Between Us, D|A|C, Art Basel Miami Art week, Miami, USA

2017
Group Exhibition - The Emergent Garden; The Art of Spring, Gallery 1070, Chicago, USA

COLLECTIONS 
Works held in private collections in the United States, Britain, Ireland, Germany, France, Angola and throughout South Africa. 
Selected Commissions: 
Centre for Prospective Students, Stellenbosch University, South Africa iThemba Labs, Cape Town, South Africa
Somerset West Primary School, Somerset West, South Africa 
Glenstantia Primary School, Pretoria, South Africa 
Caged, artwork used on CD Cover - Trip, IS. 
CD Cover for Worcester School of the Blind Choir, South Africa. 

PRESS AND PUBLICATIONS 
2019 - Create Magazine, edition 16 - August 2019, (Selected by curator Nina Blumberg, Director: Samuels Creative, NY) 
2020 - JaamZin Creative, issue 10, vol 3 - October 2020 
2021 - Interview – CultureVolt, USA (September 2021)

Which artists, books or music have inspired your work?
Influences such as Odilon Redon, Joseph Stella, Paul Gauguin, Gustav Klimt and David Hockney have shaped my painterly language, encouraging me to embrace both emotion and experimentation. 
Each of them embodies a rich interplay of color, symbolism, emotional expression, nature, and innovation, creating distinctive yet interconnected artistic legacies.

I always listen to music when I paint. In my studio I have an old-school CD player, an iPod with music from 10 years ago and of course Spotify. Favourite studio music can include anything .

Which South African deceased artist do you most admire and why?
JH Pierneef
The first time I saw his station panels, I almost fell to my knees. It were so overwhelmingly beautiful.
I love his ability to convey the beauty and complexity of the landscape through his use of light and colour in his paintings.

If you could only have one piece of art in your life, what would it be?
It would be a toss-up between Meekness by Eustache Le Sueur and Beata Beatrix by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 
Although neither reflect my personal style, both pieces posses a quiet emotional intensity that I find deeply moving.
A close alternative would be Ophelia by Odilon Redon or The Virgin by Joseph Stella

Pick three artists who you would be honored to exhibit with – and why
Walter Meyer  - He paints ordinary landscapes with a contemplative stillness and captures a quiet emotional tone that I greatly admire.
Per Adolfsen – There is a poetic minimalism to Per Adolfsen’s work. His quiet, dream-like landscape drawings often depict ordinary natural places with minimal composition, unusual colour, and a slightly melancholic or romantic mood.
Mamma Anderson - Her paintings beautifully combine drawing, narrative landscape and emotional atmosphere.

How did you get started? Did you always want to be an artist?
No, I really wanted to be an architect, but life had other plans. 
I eventually went to study art at the age of 29, completing my Visual Communication education at the Open Window Institute in Pretoria in 1999. Though trained in a formal setting, it wasn't until I relocated to the United States in 2015 that I embraced art as a full-time career.

What are some of the key themes you explore in your work?
My work revolves around themes of memory, nature and the relationship between the natural world and the human spirit, into a world where the emotional and the environmental gently intersect. 

What should people know about your art that they can’t tell from looking at it?
My art is deeply personal, often reflecting my own life’s journey and the landscapes that shaped my artistic experiences. My paintings are expressive responses to memory and place – something that is often mirrored in the titles that accompany them.
 
What are the most essential items in your studio and why?
Besides the obvious art materials, music is essential. I struggle to be creative without it, as it helps shape and infuse the emotional atmosphere in which I paint.

Tell us more about your creative process.
My art journey has taken me through various mediums and styles, with a recent exploration into intuitive landscape painting in acrylic and charcoal. I am continually drawn to the language of landscape and organic forms.
My work is mostly representational, but often infused with elements of abstraction and imagined aspects of the environment. 
I approach the canvas with openness and it’s not unusual for me to shift directions entirely or to begin anew. Sometimes I sketch a loose outline or reference photographs I’ve taken, but the final image is always the result of layered exploration and discovery. 

Do you believe an artist should use their platform to influence society? Why?
It is inevitable that an artist’s personal beliefs will translate into their artwork, whether  deliberately or subconsciously. As an individual and as an artist I have never felt the need to proselytize through my work.

Do you have a favourite or most meaningful work?
I think any painting I have made with the likeness of my son or daughter will always be special to me. 

What is your greatest achievement as an artist to date? 
Becoming a full-time artist at the age of 50.

What are your aspirations for the future?
I want to create and paint until my last breath. I feel I have started so late in life there is still so much I want to explore and create. 
Hopefully this will translate into a meaningful contribution to South African art and a good fulfilling career.