My artist statement

I am in love with our beautiful country despite all of it’s many troubles and woes. I live in Clarens in the far away Freestate – definitely the best place in all the world to live and work and have your being.

I count my blessings daily!

I do realism so good reference is important to me. Photography is a tool that we have in this day and age so I use it… to gather and record material, inspiration and ideas from wherever I travel. I am an artist though, not a walking camera – so my goal is to go beyond the photograph with my paintings. In fact very few are copies of an individual photograph, but generally are more of an imaginary scene comprising real elements from different photographs, composited together to create a unique composition, depicting the atmosphere, and the mood, and more especially… the story… of an area in the landscape, rather than a mechanically reproduced scene in the landscape.

My passion is to portray the heart, the soul, and the elusive mystery, of our stunning landscape. Not to simply create a replica of an image. I do my best to make use of light, composition, texture, mood and content to do just that.

I love to travel in the far reaches of our great Karoo, with its big sky, big space, amazing quiet, and more especially… rapidly decaying and disappearing life and culture… and that’s what I seek to portray in my paintings.