Artist´s Statement
“I am inspired to make art by everything I see and hear and think and feel – it is a passion, it is essential for me to express myself with things I make with my hands. This is how I give vent to my frustrations, my anger, my joy. For me art speaks to the beyond, to the ineffable, we need art that opens the inner vision to see forwards, as well as the stuff that rubs our noses in the everyday and the material world.
I have always painted and drawn, although it didn’t become my raison d´etre until after I had qualified (with a PhD in Digital Image Processing). I began taking my art more seriously in about 1990, at the same time as I began doing my PhD at Wits University. By the time of my first solo exhibition at the Grahamstown Festival in 1995, the writing was on the wall….I finished my degree and chose to follow my passion instead of logic.
I have exhibited many times – over 100 group exhibitions and 18 solo exhibitions in South Africa and overseas, as well as collaborative projects such as ‘!Xoe’, a site-specific land-art exhibition in Nieu-Bethesda in the Karoo, and ‘pARTs’, an ongoing experimental performance/visual/sound art collaboration with dancer Athina Copteros and a changing cast of dancers, musicians, lighting specialists and other artists.
Although trained as a painter, I make art in both 2 and 3 dimensions. My paintings, mainly in oils, draw on a wide range of influences and sources (including other disciplines such as Physical Theatre). In my 3-dimensional work I combine materials such as welded steel, fibreglass, resin and wood with found objects to create assemblage sculptures, installations and environments. Given my background in image processing, I also create a lot of digital art and publicity work, both for myself and on commission.”
