I paint out of the
tradition of the new expressionists. Finding my inspiration from
the experience of living in a world in constant motion and my
feelings that are born out of what I see, both in myself and in the
world. My training has consisted of tuition in Goethean color
theory and practice with artist Beni Kleynhans and a three month
general arts course at the Novalis College, Cape Town (1991), as
well as lessons with artist
Cyril Coetzee.
Some of my works are held in private collections in the UK, Canada,
Germany, and South Africa. I work as a part time Psychophonetics
Counsellor, and help in the administration of the Anthroposophical
Society in Southern Africa.
“The more clearly
you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a
lover of what is.” – Baruch Spinoza.
In my personal
creative process, I almost always begin from a place of not
knowing. Something stirs within me, like being itchy under the
skin. Its irritation begins to build in me, and I realize the need
to express. I feel that something needs to be done. The process has
been set in motion.
How is it that in
the act of painting certain colors present themselves to us and the
end result is the mixture of these into something new, a form that
can be seen to be pleasing, frightening or even abhorrent?
What happens in the
inner life of those who create with intention to bring awareness.
What responsibility rests on the artist to honor the gift, of the
creative element, drawn from the depths and the heights. Through my
painting I am able to immerse myself into that which cannot be
spoken. It seems to me that there exists a need for immersion into
the chaotic unorganized parts of existence: stepping into the
volcano, entry into the cauldron, and from here it becomes a
possibility to transform the chaotic into some kind of order.
“Only what is
chaotic can be made beautiful. When we transform the chaos in the
cosmos, beauty arises. Chaos and Cosmos are thus interchangeable
concepts. The cosmos (which means the beautiful world) cannot be
created out of earthly things, but only out of chaos. And what we
make out of earthly things is only an imitation, within matter, of
already formed chaos.” – Rudolf Steiner.
If as a man I am a
microcosm of the cosmos, and continuously the cosmos is in a state
of transforming chaos into cosmos, then in the same light it is my
experience of this within myself, continuously working on
transforming the chaos of my own being and so assisting in its
evolution. When I paint I experience the colors of my inner life I
experience that these are beings that I see, that this is the space
in which I weave, that this is my creative landscape, my
opportunity to show worlds being created and destroyed. I think my
way into the paintbrush, I think the paints into imaginations.