To our visitors – whether holiday-home owners or tourists out to catch the last of the summer with us in Hermanus: May you have sunny weather, a safe holiday and joyful Eastertide and please take an artwork home with you. Oh, and go easy on the chocolate.
Galleries
There are twenty-five names on my list of artspots in Hermanus and Onrus – and another sixteen or so art businesses and galleries in nearby villages – Stanford, Greyton, Betty’s Bay and Kleinmond. All of them worth a visit. Together they make up an art destination that cannot be missed. So if it’s not perfect beach weather, what about taking a look at what is on offer? Galleries are places to browse until you find the piece of art to which you react emotionally and which you cannot live without. In the auction room you have to be quick and certain of your taste but in a gallery you can take all the time you need. I was in Tay Modern the other day and heartened to see a family with two youngsters reacting to Tay’s fantastical, colour-filled works. Kids need to be exposed to art and to realize that a gallery is a treasure house and not a forbidding no-go area.
Gallery Hermanus
This unpretentious gallery smack in the middle of town has windows brimming with paintings. It is one of a group of seven galleries operated by The Fine Arts Portfolio, based in Cape Town. Rensie Blignaut is the local manager and she draws on the substantial stock of her parent company to satisfy the needs of her clients. Rensie is a people’s person – she hails from Oudtshoorn where she took art at school and she understudied Cobus Kershoff for some time before taking over when he opened his own artspot. The art she sells is accessible and varied; she uses the company website www.fineartportfolio.co.za to select the works she would like to display. Nothing too cutting-edge here but the gallery clearly fills a niche in our art world and quietly gets on with the business of displaying and selling art.
Rossouw Modern
In the fisherman’s cottage on Harbour Road Joshua Rossouw, enfant terrible of the local art scene, shows contemporary art which delight his artistic sensibilities. Joshua has just received a collection of works by the winner of the 2008 PPC Young Sculptors Award, Ruhan Janse van Vuuren. “ His knowledge of painting becomes evident in the incredibly rich and seductive colouration and textures that cover his sculptures in resin and oils. He has an intense empathy for the unsanitised, mundane and flawed. His figures are almost defenceless as everyday people with their own inhibitions and imperfections and he tries to depict figures that are natural and at the same time he questions the future of figurative sculpture in contemporary art.” They are challenging and not for everyone. But go and have a look.
On the gallery walls there are plenty of vibrant paintings – the works by Glenn Cox always catch my eye and the up-and-coming Cape Town artist Bastiaan van Stenis shows canvasses which are arresting and sometimes disturbing.
Hornbill Fine Art
Wednesday saw the opening by Nico van Rensburg of the exhibition “Feathers” – Rouvé, Amanda Reyneke van den Berg and Erna Dry. The gallery is upstairs from the Hornbill Studio where Afrocentric ceramics of high quality are on display. Erna’s study in pencil on paper, entitled “Flushed Out” is one of the works currently on view.
Vermont Art Circle
Sandbaai Stationery and Art at the Superplants Nursery gives you a last chance on Saturday morning to view and perhaps submit a sealed bid for the Circle’s Bid and Buy Exhibition. Louis Genade, owner of the shop, is so entranced with his new paint medium Crisitex that he took his first hesitant steps in painting. The result was, alas, deemed not ready for hanging in the show.
Joshua Miles
This Easter Joshua Miles (another Baardskeerderbos artist) is on show at Prince Albert; but you can also see his work at the Mission’s House in Onrus. The counterplay between his oils and his woodcuts is intriguing. His show has several examples of the same subject treated in both mediums.
The Gallery at Hubbards Cupboard
Bruce Myles, gallery director, tipped me off that they have just received a landscape by Paddy Starling. This well-established artist (b 1940) is represented in a number of prestigious collections. The Hubbards Cupboard exhibition area covers the restaurant area as well as the streetside gallery of decorative art. The paintings on display include local artists and others sourced by the keen eye of Carol van Hoogstraaten, owner of the Cupboard.
Framers
Any gallery will tell you what a difference a frame makes. I am putting the spotlight on local framers in my ArtsPage of 8 May so if you do framing and want to participate, let me know. And if you have works that need an uplift, start sorting them out now.
News and views always welcome at niblos@telkomsa.net.
Rugs and Art Expo at Fernkloof
Watching the creative process is always fun and this Saturday from 10h00 to 16h00 in the Botanical Society Hall in Fernkloof there will be several painters at their easels, painting from nature. If you are visiting the Morning Market you may like to pop in and see them. The exhibition, which will include an array of Kelim rugs from Afganistan, Turkey and Iran, has been organized by Eleanor Welsh of Iona Property Gallery. Some ten years ago, it was Eleanor who, with friends, ran a tea garden from the same spot to raise funds for the society. Nowadays she shows the works of artists in her real estate office at the corner of Long Street and Victoria Square and is offering the public a chance to see her artists in action en plein air. Your opportunity to buy while the paint is still moist.
Fred Rousseau is one of the artists represented and he has taken over Peter Earl’s role of teacher-in-atendance at The Art Shop. The work illustrated is a seascape in oils entitled Kwaaiwater. Fred strives for authenticity and detail in his painting. Nature and wildlife and the sea are important to him.
Other local artists on the Expo are :- Willma Burger, Tosca, Glenda Miles, Claudie Lemoine, Charme Southey, Dulcie Beebe, Johlette Nortje, Dante Rubin, Zanie and the Photographs of Hansie Oosthuizen.(See Sketch).
Kelims (the Anatolian word has half a dozen alternative spellings) are flat-woven as opposed to pile-knotted rugs. They are relatively less expensive than tufted carpets and are often long and narrow, usually being tapestry-woven. The great thing about Kelims is that they age well, the natural dyes of the older ones gently fading and enhancing their beauty. The irregularity of the pattern points to the hand weaving techniques.
SKETCH - Niël Jonker
If you live in deepest Baardskeerdersbos, as so many artists have chosen to do, you will almost certainly be part of the B’Bos Art Route. (Their next open weekend is 2/3 May and you can get details on 028 3819636 or www.freewebs.com/artroute.) It is a lovely trip from Hermanus if you are happy with some gravel.
But the mountain is not always going to come to Mohammed. Artists living in nature need to travel, to have exhibitions elsewhere and this is what Niël Jonker does. He is a regular at the KKNK, Oudtshoorn’s national art fest and has for the past ten days been there, showing his new collection entitled “Terroir”. Most are landscapes in the Cape Impressionist tradition, as in the picture “Hemel en Aarde - Reëndag” . He explores the links between viticulture and painting in his moody renditions of local marine and countryside scenes.
An artist like Jonker has been painting and sculpting for twenty years and he has earned his spurs. I have enjoyed his works at The Mission’s House gallery in Onrus. The CV details become less relevant but it is interesting to see from his new website that he hails from Oudtshoorn and painted full-time from 2004. He is inviting friends and artlovers to a launch of the website www.nieljonker.co.za on Sunday 19 April from 10h00 at the Stanford home of his friend and fellow artist Sanette Upton. She is at 2, Lower Longmarket Street in Stanford and one will have a chance to see paintings from the Terroir series as well as some of his still life canvasses and figurative bronzes.
Niel is also known for his breadmaking skills – you will often find him at the Fernkloof Farmer’s Market on a Saturday morning and the plaasbrood is a treat. Bread, wine and art, they seem to go pretty well together; just add friends and ambience. Talent and perseverance, too. No wonder Niel is a cheerful chap. If you would like to make his acquaintance and see his works in the comfort of a home setting, ring Sanette on 072 822 9970.
SKETCH - Hansie Oosthuizen
Photography as an art medium? I confess I once had difficulty with the notion. But it’s getting easier and, if you share my initial reservation, I urge you to visit Hansie Oosthuizen at his sunny studio behind the Engen garage at the Sandbaai crossroads. A full range of his breathtaking studies will be on view there till end April and thereafter at selected art galleries – Hansie loves his art but as a professional photographer he is out and about so often that a home base is more cost-effective than a photo gallery.
When I called him to discuss his work, I said “Is that the world-famous photographer?” And the answer came back, with a chuckle “Only my mother thinks so…” But he is being modest and we need to know that, right here in Hermanus, we have the winner of the just-announced Sony 2008 Image of the Year award. It is a monochrome-toned image of a gecko’s foot, fragile and evocative. A huge feather in his cap and just one sample from a top photographer whose daily work covers the whole spectrum from weddings and functions to portrait, fashion and commercial work as well as those riveting art works on display.
Of course with digital cameras, the image can be manipulated more easily than with film photography. But with Hansie’s pictures, the striking effect is usually because of the pin sharpness of the image, its magnified size, the saturation of the colour in the immaculate limited-edition or one-off prints and, critically, the artist’s eye. His subjects are wide-ranging and some of the best works for me were the impressionist close-ups of found objects, not beautiful in themselves but made beautiful by his appropriation of them. “Make it, don’t just take it” is a theme that I first heard at the Hermanus Photographic Society of which Hansie is an active member.
October this year will see him in New Brunswick, Canada to co- present a workshop retreat in Fundy National Park. Locals may want to join his Weekend Workshop with David Randel on digital camera use, 18 and 19 April at FrancolinHof Guesthouse in Hermanus. Hansie is keen to share his knowledge and experience, he managed to clarify the basis of digital picture size and pixel count for me in a few ticks. His cheerful and straight-forward manner goes well with his passion for his medium. But do not take my word for it, visit his studio in the next week or two and see for yourself what this artist can do.
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