Artist Bio
An oil painter with a deep appreciation of all things handmade.
Amanda Oakleaf is an artist and painter based in Southborough, MA, a suburb west of Boston, where she lives with her husband and two boys. She is first and foremost an oil painter but has additional experience in watercolor, ceramics, as well as cake sculpture and edible art.
Her career has bounced around between fine art, cake decorating, business ownership, and back to fine art again.
Amanda was born and raised in South Dakota, where she still occasionally derives inspiration. She made the cross-country trek with her husband out to Boston to attend college. After earning her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2009, Amanda transitioned right into owning her own business, Amanda Oakleaf Cakes. She started her custom cake business out of her one-bedroom apartment in Boston, which eventually grew into its first storefront in Winthrop, MA. After another leap of growth in both clients and employees, the business moved back to Boston, MA in 2013 and changed its name to Oakleaf Cakes Bake Shop where the bakery cafe still resides today under new ownership since November 2022. During her time as owner Amanda guided a team of bakers and cake artists to create some of the best custom, sculpted cakes and edible art in the Boston area.
How does all this cake relate to her art you ask? She was never more than an arm’s reach away from a paintbrush or palette knife as tools to continue pursuing her fine art. Many of her cake creations featured both watercolor-esc paintings done with food color and sculpted cakes realized with a palette knife and buttercream. Cake design was both a fulfilling artistic endeavor as well as a real-world application of both the 2D and 3D skills she obtained during her time at Mass Art.
Now a former business owner Amanda has more dedicated studio time where her style of 'painterly realism' is used to create oil paintings of the observed environments around her. A central theme in Amanda’s work is her admiration for all things handmade, specifically objects and spaces both created and inhabited by her family and the memories contained within. This is evident in her chosen subject matter as well as in her creation technique. She transforms the cozy corners of her world into still lifes, interiors, and landscape paintings all while maintaining her roots in the cake world by consistently using the palette knife to create warm and inviting paintings with yummy, buttercream-like texture.
You can view Amanda's paintings regularly at local galleries including Arts Worcester, Hopkinton Center for the Arts, and Concord Art. Her work has also been juried into regional shows at Fitchburg Art Museum, New Hampshire Art Association, The Loading Dock Gallery, as well as Small Stones Art Festival.