Enthusiasm
The word enthusiasm comes from the Greek enthousiasmos—“to be inspired by the divine.” It is a meaning that continues to guide my creative practice. Painting is, for me, an act of listening as much as making, requiring presence, trust and a willingness to follow intuition. Solitude often reveals hidden memories and emotions, so returning to clarity, honesty and quiet joy becomes a practice in itself. Whether figurative or abstract, my paintings explore the liminal space between the visible and the unseen, where dreams, memory and imagination merge with imagined South African flora and fauna to give form to an inner landscape.
Born in the USA
A white South African artist and an African American/Navajo musician met in New York in the 1960s, where love and music briefly intertwined. They never saw each other again. Nine months later, I arrived. That’s a story for another time.
I was born in California but grew up in the small mining town of Pilgrim’s Rest, South Africa, where my twin sisters and I spent our childhood roaming the mountains, immersed in nature and nourished by my mother’s organic garden. Watching my exceptionally creative, yet financially struggling mother, I vowed by the age of twelve that I would never become an artist. Despite my best intentions, I have been making things for as long as I can remember. As a child, I sold papier-mâché animals, rag dolls and handmade Barbie clothes, taking as much delight in designing the packaging as the objects themselves. My teenage years were spent cutting up perfectly good clothes to remake them in my own style—much to my mother’s dismay. Looking back, it seems there was never really another path.
Vintage markets. Botanical art photography. Fashion. Japanese art movies. Spiritual philosophy. Chilean writer Isabel Allende’s novels. Patterns. They are EVERYWHERE. I’m obsessed with them.
The curvilinear era, Art Nouveau, and all its artists; Klimt, Mucha, Mackintosh from the Arts and Crafts Movement, African & European Folk Art. The romantic, stylized artistic expression of that period. Feminine whimsy - boldness in shapes and vivid colours.
