My life in a nutshell

 

I was born in May 1970 and grew up on a farm in the Ladybrand District in Freestate Province, in South Africa . In the last year of the 80's I started studying Visual Art, specialising in Painting, at the Central University of Technology in Bloemfontein, where I earned a diploma in 1991.

 

I then moved to Europe for two years to work and travel and see art. For the ten years before I moved to Ireland in 2007, I lived and worked in Cape Town, but I did not work as an artist. Whilst raising children I studied further and earned an Honours degree from the University of South Africa in 2013 in Visual Art (BVA) . In October 2020 I had a studio built in the back garden of my house in Celbridge, County Kildare, where I produce my work.

 

My work: 

I have experimented, and have worked extensively with different media. When I was younger I worked especially with oil but at the moment I prefer to work with acrylics on canvas, which I often use in conjunction with mixed media.

 

I normally have a few themes that I work with but they are all connected with aspects of the natural world. In depicting landscapes, I would try to capture the mood, atmosphere and even the weather of the scene. At other times I would depict forests where I try to capture the play of light. In my studies of flowers, grasses and plant life, I try to portray their contradictory nature of fragility and resilience, their beauty and ephemeral natures. 

 

In all these I play with mixing abstract painting with more realistic depictions of nature. Sometimes I push this further and see how I can reach a point in which an image can be read both as abstract and realistic. At other times I do pure abstract art pieces.

 

I do believe that art brings joy into our lives. It can bring a spark of energy into our living spaces, it can sometimes affect contemplation or act as commentary or simply set a certain mood.