Artist Marie Theron chronicles the West Coast of South Africa

Dolos, one amazing South African invention!

2012-01-29T12:10:00.007+02:00

South Africans are naturally very innovative, and we are credited with some amazing inventions! Here I have painted one of the enormous dolosse along the Yzerfontein Harbour and jetty. They are made of concrete poured into a steel mould. So heavy are these structures that they are manufactured here in Yzerfontein or wherever they are needed. Cranes will lift them into place so that they can protect harbour walls and breakwaters and they also prevent soil erosion.10 000 dolosse are required for a kilometre of coastline.

I have to quote from Wikepedia here: "They work by dissipating, rather than blocking, the energy of waves. Their design deflects most wave action energy to the side, making them more difficult to dislodge than objects of a similar weight presenting a flat surface. Though they are placed into position on top of each other by cranes, over time, they tend to get further entangled as the waves shift them. Their design ensures that they form an interlocking, but porous, wall."Wow, the power of water and the cleverness of this invention!

Now, why are they called dolos ( plural: dolosse)? The form is similar to the neck bones of oxen. In the early days of our country, small children would pretend that these bones were their oxen to pull their tiny pioneer wagons. So they were called "doll oxen", which generated into the word dolosse.Then the word was also used to describe the bones thrown to read fortunes by the tribal medicine men, called sangomas. The act of predicting the future was more like "dobbel" which means "gambling". So those bones are still known as dolosse too.

These lovely structures, the theme of my painting and photos shows the third use of the word, and they do look like the neck bones of large animals. Grandson Philip was here from the States, and posed against the dolosse. He could not stop questioning his grandfather about these structures that can be stacked ANY WAY, yet they always fit together. After leaving a comment, you may want to visit some of our more important inventions HERE

Amaryllis Belladonna

2012-01-15T17:53:00.008+02:00

South Africa has its high summer season in December, and the place to find bloggers and artists is mostly the kitchen as social life is at its peak and family members get together. Somewhere in the middle of hot-hot January, a guilty feeling about 'not painting' gears its head! Thus it is time to pick up where I left off!

I started the year with a soft oil painting of a typical West Coast winter rainfall flower, but mine is a "flower-gone-crazy"! Amaryllis Belladonna or March lilies are supposed to flower in February/ March. Mine chose November to appear and January to disappear. Underneath the ground those large bulbs are resting now until who-knows-when! They sure love the very dry summer and the harshest and driest part of the garden!

I picked some to put indoors and there the soft pink flowers darkened to a deeper shade. In my photo I caught some of the light shining through the fragile drying flowers, heart-breakingly lovely in their final moment! Read more about March lilies here as well as on Diana's blog Elephant's Eye.

Some Armchair Travelling

2011-12-03T15:19:00.008+02:00

The wind is blowing! (Notice that fed-up Mitzy!) This is the wind that was the terror of ships along the West Coast. The ocean is covered in those white foamy choppy waves we used to call "horses". On Facebook my Cape Town daughter and her friends are debating the wisdom of wearing skirts in the Cape during this season! I think this is the ideal time for some armchair travelling! Or cyber-travelling!

So if you want to read and read and read about our wonderful country, I can recommend some websites (whether they mention early summer windstorms is another question!)

These are the blogs who won the public voting part of the South African Blog Awards. They are big Tourism giants and they know how to promote the country! I have no regrets about entering the Blog Awards as I received many visitors during the week of voting. So without further ado, here are the Best of the Best: Congratulations to them!

http://africageographic.com/safari/blog

http://blog.getaway.co.za

http://travelblog.portfoliocollection.com

Nuweland - Barrels, Baskets and Bottles

2011-11-26T18:47:00.010+02:00

Oil on Canvas

18"x14"

(457 x 356mm)

Farm stalls are popular out in the country, and here on the West Coast, such stalls are found along the R27 coastal road . My nearest farm stall is 11 km away and such a treat! Here we can buy fresh home-made bread warm from the oven. On the shelves there are many wonderful preserves, like my personal favourite: green fig preserve, and would you believe, you can also buy farm butter here!

The owner of Vygevallei Farm Stall and Wine Cellar is wine-maker Juan Louw. After experiencing wine-making everywhere in the country and even as far as California and New Zealand, Juan decided that their farm, Nuweland in the Swartland district between Malmesbury and Darling would be ideal for a cellar. Also that Route R27 would be a good position for a wine /farm stall!

It was here that I saw my next painting subject, the beautiful barrels, baskets and bottles, while the family tasted and fell in love with Juan's wines! I love it when the sharp West Coast light casts contrasts of light and shadow inside buildings, as you can see in the forms which I melted together and allowed some detail to dissolve into the background.

Read more on Nuweland Winery and its owner HERE

If your language is Afrikaans, you will be proud to learn that the labels of these wonderful Nuweland Wines are written in Afrikaans! ( Lees die volle artikel in DIE BURGER )

About the Blog Award Finalists I still have no news, but will post links when I receive notice!

From the West Coast of South Africa: Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T08:49:00.004+02:00

Y'all are busy with cooking preparations and being sociable and thankful, so from the West Coast of South Africa to my dear children and all my friends in the States: HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Work Horses of the Ocean, Saldanha Bay

2011-11-13T12:46:00.008+02:00

The Public part of voting in the South African Blog Awards are closed now. Thank you for all the visitors that I have counted on my blog and if you have voted, many thanks. (Late voters, sorry but our Midnight is 8 hours ahead of the USA. Nobody's fault!) I will publish the results on the next post, and provide my readers with links to the 3 best travel blogs.

The painting shows a morning scene in tranquil Saldanha Bay, and the "work horses of the sea", the crayfish trawlers are ready for the early risers who should soon appear to board them.

Saldanha was named after Admiral Antonio de Saldanha, who anchored here in 1503 to look for supplies. He was unfortunately wounded by Khoikoi men. For some time it was thought that Saldanha Bay would become the docking harbour for sailing ships, but water was unobtainable. Thus Table Bay became the major port for ships coming in for supplies.

Now, after three and a half centuries there might be a reversal of roles. With steel and great fisheries there already, Saldanha could begin to play a role in Import/Export of goods. There are plans to expand Saldanha Harbour and give Table Bay Harbour some breathing space.

Back to my painted scene and photos: what a lovely place this is! I wonder if the seagull and the cormorant are eager for the fishing boats to start hauling in their harvest!

The 2011 South African Blog Awards

2011-11-02T17:52:00.005+02:00

The first leg of the 2011 South African Blog Awards end 7 days from now! Will you vote for me on that large red icon on the right?

This serene tableau at Saldanha Bay caught my eye. The little yacht seemed quite neglegted and not in use anymore. But how elegant are those lines!!! In real estate one often hears about a house advertised as "a decorater's dream". This could be the yachting equavalent!

We owned a yacht with a Lello form and sailed a lot, as I mentioned before, but don't ask me to count the rigging. I battled so much with those thin lines, there was no way on completing the painting that I was going to go back to see whether they were all there!

Don't forget to vote for me in "Travel" on the 2011 South African Blog Awards! (This is new to me, but we are actually encouraged to canvas for votes.....everyone is welcome to vote but only one vote per e-mail address is allowed)

Even when nothing happens........

2011-10-28T08:46:00.013+02:00

The thing with blogging is that it is a true commitment, you start and you have to keep it going. One often sees bloggers feeling just a little bit guilty if they do not blog regularly....and we all admire Nancy Medina and Kelley MacDonald and all those busy little bees who will post every day as sure as the sun rises!

Back at the ranch, being away and having illness in the family, spring cleaning and gardening gets in the way of posting. But "even when nothing happens", things do happen and here are a few for your amazement and amusement:

My "blog book" arrived, beautifully printed with the first 160 posts. How does one feel when you unpack it? I thought that I felt fairly flat, like a student who made a nice little assignment and now what? Send me an e-mail if you would like to page through it online!

The little sapling of Sutherlandia (see previous post) had so much rain, and as I went out this morning this tiny plant had flower buds all over, so we may be drinking a health brew in future!

We visited my children in Durban for 10 days and spend a weekend caring for the menegary of 3 dogs, 5 hamsters and 8 rabbits. What fun! The black rabbit, Benjamin, stays in the girls' room in the day and goes out in the garden at night, being nocturnal! Snowball, very white, is the mom of 5 girls. They live with Dad Peter in the enclosed and sheltered rabbit garden. My daughter was happy about the female rabbits, as sterilizing males are very expensive ! I painted some bunnies in watercolour.

My friend Tatyana Binovskaya has been wanting to paint me for a long time. The end result was a wonderful surprise! Tatyana is so talented!

There is an oil painting of boats on my easel.....if one cannot travel, there are always older photos to work from! So the next post will be about the real West Coast again!

Sutherlandia frutescens or Cancer Bush

2011-10-16T11:59:00.009+02:00

A wonderful perk of travelling is getting to try the food of different nations! I think armchair travelling is the same and I found much joy in all the comments I received about waterblommetjies, a traditional dish of the Cape! Now, from food to medicine as I introduce the amazing centuries-old cure, Sutherlandia frutescens, locally known as cancer bush.

Having heard so much about this bush and having noticed it in health tablets, I set off to !Khwa Ttu to buy the plant for my garden. I was lucky, there were saplings for sale! Not only that, but in the indigenous garden the plants were in bloom. The restaurant at !Khwa Ttu also had pots of them as flower arrangements, nicely labelled with info about the plant.

According to the booklet "Gathering Fynbos" written by San experts 2 handfuls of dried leaves and young stems should be added to cold water and boiled for half an hour. One should drink a small glassful once a day. It is claimed to be a great immune booster and beneficial as preventative or cure for pancreatic cancer, aids, kidney disease, diabetes 2, arthritus, fever, gout , urinary tract infection and for treating the mother after delivery. Remember, the San and Khoikoi people for centuries survived without Western medicine!

I needed some good neutral opinion and was pleased to find a very informative website official-looking and honest and never trying to over- glorify the plant. I took this paragraph from their site.

Quality-of-Life Tonic

There is preliminary clinical evidence that Sutherlandia has a direct anticancer effect in some cancers, and also acts as an immune stimulant, but Sutherlandia should not be recommended as a so-called “universal cancer cure”, but rather as a quality-of-life tonic.
Mood
Sutherlandia decreases anxiety and irritability and it elevates mood.
Appetite and weight
It is an established fact that up to a third of cancer patients succumb to the wasting syndrome, rather than the actual tumor mass. Appropriate doses of select chemotypes and varieties of Sutherlandia dramatically improves appetite, and weight-gain can be expected in wasted patients. The first 5 kg gain is common after six weeks of treatment. In patients who are not wasted, weight-gain is not usual.
Energy levels and exercise tolerance
Sutherlandia typically improves the energy levels and exercise tolerance of patients, and gives an enhanced sense of well-being.
The website has all the newspaper and medical reports one can wish for, for those interested in more info about Sutherlandia. If you come across it in health tablets in the States or UK or anywhere, I would love to know! I hope my little plant will thrive so that I can brew some elixir!

The painting was done in watercolours on 300gms watercolour paper. Those rhythmic little stems and the large pea-like red flowers were a tempting subject, tempting enough to make me reach my watercolour paints.

Waterblommetjies (Aponogeton distachyos)

2011-09-25T17:36:00.018+02:00

Waterblommetjies also known as Cape pondweed, Cape hawthorn or Cape asparagus, is an ingredient in one of the most loved traditional dishes in the country called waterblommetjie-bredie (This word is a mouthful!!!!) While I lived briefly in other provinces of South Africa, I had to rely on the tinned products to make the popular stew. Here, of course, I am so close to many traditional food sources: only 90 km from where the bokkoms are harvested and a 3 minute walk from crayfish and other seafood. The nearest dams for harvesting waterblommetjies are on Lelieblom Farm in the Darling district. (The farm where I get so much material for my blogs!!)

I find that they appear in the markets more and more and this might mean that they will soon be available in fresh form all over the country. The ones I painted here were from a large fruit and veg market. The first people to utilize these greenish hard little flowers growing on long thin grass-like stems, were the Khoikoi people. They used it in stews, mostly with mutton, onions and potatoes and flavoured with salt, pepper and sorrel. Sorrel, of course grows in springtime so it is available at the same time as the waterblommetjies, and it is used to give a slightly acidic taste to the dish. I do not use the common garden sorrel at all, as it is much safer to have the plant positively verified by an expert. In fact, we will only eat it if three experts point them out! The little sorrel flowers on my cooked dish was placed there briefly for the photo!

Recipes? Just do what comes naturally. I always fry some onions first, then some lamb knuckles, add cubed potatoes and water, stock or wine and prepare for a slow simmer. Add the sorrel only if you know your garden weeds! The waterblommetjies are added last and steams on top of the dish as they soften and break up quickly. Mixed herbs, a little salt and some white pepper are a must. We find this dish filling and would eat it with salad things only, but rice is the traditional accompaniment.

For soup: Steam the waterblommetjies with potato and onion in a little milk and vegetable stock. Flavour with garlic and the usual dried herbs/salt/pepper. Liquidize, serve and enjoy this healthy vegetarian soup with some warm crusty bread.

I was unable to visit a waterblommetjie harvesting, but in the background I painted a man, knee-deep in water, harvesting the plants and putting them in a floating dish.

(Thanking South African Tourism for the photo of the harvesters)

Master and Commander

2011-08-27T17:41:00.009+02:00

A large part of the West Coast consists of farm lands and countryside. In between you will find our beloved small towns, fondly known as "dorpies". The atmosphere is rural, to say the least! I often visit Lelieblom Farm and there I have met some other farmers too. I need to see the milk farms especially because the products from Darling Dairies are well known all over the country in food stores. I also needed an excuse to paint a colourful rooster, so here it is!

The picturesque roosters at Lelieblom Farm are known to rush through the house to reach the front garden as soon as a door opens! I chose to paint this colourful red guy! In the painting I placed him in the foreground so that all else will seem small. Look at that assertive stance! As a little girl I was chased by a ferocious rooster, they do that, don't they? I call my painting "Master and Commander", because of the bossy attitude!

My West Coast Calendar and some Websites

2011-08-24T16:11:00.010+02:00

My WEST COAST CALENDAR is now available in the year of your choice and can be ordered from RedBubble.

Here is the link, and for book readers, here is the site to find it: www.redbubble.com/people/marietheron/calendars/7661685-west-coast-chronicles. RedBubble calenders are printed on excellent paper and the images (all 13 of them) may be framed afterwards.

Here are some websites where my work can be seen:

To find my blog: http://artistmarietheron.blogspot.com

My fashion fun blog: http://frenchbelles.blogspot.com

Viewing or buying original art: www.Southafricanartists.com/home/marietheron

Calenders, cards and prints: http://marietheron.redbubble.com

10 Questions for West Coast Artist Marie Theron

2011-08-15T07:43:00.007+02:00

Great excitement today as I have finally decided to have this blog printed in book form up to the 160th post. I decided to include this interview in the book:

Posted on PORTFOLIO Mon, 14 Dec 2009

Marie Theron (whose work was featured on our blog last month) agreed to answer 10 Questions in this month's edition of "10 Questions for South Africans."

This South African artist was so enamoured of the West Coast that she upped-sticks and moved there to be close to her source of inspiration each day.

Don't be surprised if you feel the urge to move to the West Coast yourself after reading what she has to say about this unique region of South Africa!

10 Questions for Marie Theron

1. What place (in SA) do you call home, and why?

I live in a private nature reserve with my studio 80 m from the sea. This position was full of surprises when I first moved here and I slowly got used to the intensity of Nature. Storms are so totally overpowering that I am always reminded of the ships that were wrecked all along the West Coast. On the other hand one can experience a field of colourful wildflowers starting from our garden and stretching as far as the eye can see.

Close to home...

2. Favourite place to have breakfast near(ish) where you live?

Definitely Simoné’s in Darling. Our attractive young restaurateur is always there to welcome you, smiling and chatting and busy as a bee, and the food is superb. The coffee is very good (important in the morning). Edit 15/08/11:This place is no longer in existence, but now we go to !Khwa Ttu, of course)

3. How does a working day in your life look?

I wake up with thoughts of a painting I am working on. Sometimes I will prop up my latest painting in the bedroom while I drink my coffee, to make sure everything is in balance. As my bedroom adjoins the studio I will often start painting whilst still in my night-clothes. A good day will have two sessions of three hours each for painting. I rest and read between sessions. Housework, gardening and blogging are all done in the periods in-between.

Outside Marie's studio

4. What is it about the West Coast that appealed to you so much that you decided to move there?.

The absence of traffic, the proximity of Nature; and because there are no high-rise buildings and few tall trees, the openness of the West Coast has a very special appeal.

A recent painting: 'Workers in Vineyard' - (near Malmesbury)

5. Which SA artists work do you admire?

Peter Midlane’s paintings always stop me in my tracks. He has a true understanding of the South African landscape and puts it down without the sweet sentimentality one often sees.

6. What inspires you (in your work, every day, in life)?

I think to even become an artist in the first place; you have to be inspired by the lives of the Great Masters of Art. Whether they worked unrewarded and unacknowledged or found themselves prosperous, whether they died young for their country or lived to their nineties; whether weak and sickly or full of stamina and health: hardly anyone of them were idle or sat on their laurels! It was work at any cost!

Marie's latest work - 'Arriving in Piketberg'

7. When you’re away from SA what do you miss?

I determine to enjoy travelling and not spend my time longing back, but of course our ocean, our clouds, blue skies and indigenous flowers are the most beautiful.

8. Tell us, briefly, about a positive or unique South African holiday / travelling experience.

There are many of course, depending what you are looking for: the peace of the Highveld of Mpumalanga or the culture of the cities. I think Lamberts Bay is a lovely experience. The birdlife and sea and boats are magnificent. It is impossible to tire of the gannets. Who can ever eat too many crayfish? And for a Saturday evening with the sun setting way past eight, the Muisbosskerm is such wonderful and relaxed eating experience!

Lambert's Bay - a lovely destination

9. Who is your South African hero, and why?

Can I change that to a town I admire? Then I will choose cheeky Darling, full of breezy confidence. They are as hard hit by the slump in the world economy as anywhere else, but there is no letting up, no slacking. A visitor can find something pleasant to do, somewhere to go almost any night of the week! You will always find smiling, positive people there.

10. Once you’ve run out of inspiration along the West Coast where will you be heading?

It is impossible to run out of West Coast material. I have hardly touched the sea and all it has to offer in critters, birds and boats. There is the San history and the Moravian missions. There are so many fynbos species (a painting of a special plant is coming up on my blog on Christmas morning.) The more I speak with people the more stories, places and legends of the West Coast are revealed, so hopefully I will just paint on and on…….

Awesome Sunsets

2011-08-09T09:27:00.011+02:00

Sunsets at Kabeljoubank!!! Having lived here for so many years, our sunsets still remain a spectacular phenomenon! Is there some science, I often wonder, like the science that can measure sound to measure this burst of colour? Should there not be a formula by which I can measure the variety and intensity?

There are evenings when the waves stubbornly "ignore" the sunset and remains unmoved! Then again, like some weeks ago, everything was tainted pink, right up to the pebble-stones at my feet.

I posted some photos of our sunsets and by contrast, the sunset photo I took on the East Coast of Zanzibar last week! I realise that "Bambi Boerbok" has been on show on my blog far too long! Now you know where I've been! :-)

Bambi Boerbok

2011-07-17T12:45:00.009+02:00

What a strange title, you may say! But our true South African Boerbokke or Boer Goats are a strong and healthy breed, world famous and already bred in places as diverse as Norway, Texas, New Zealand and Australia. I am fortunate, because for me to see a true farm on the West Coast, I need only need to head for Lelieblom Farm near Darling. The wonderful thing about Lelieblom is it's realness, maintained in a natural old-fashioned style by Mike and Karen Basson! This is not a farm bought by investors and turned into a pedicured and rebuilt 5-star international resort (as happened to many farms the last couple of years); but a real-life African farm reminiscent of the earlier settler days.

I love the earth, the barn-turned-home & farm restaurant, the poultry running around and all the farm animals - an artist's dream, as Maree would say! Most of all, I love the sight of these Boerbokke! I asked Karen about their natures and had to laugh at the answer I received: "friendly, curious, and extremely naughty! No garden, fence or tree is safe with them around!" (In vain I asked Karen for some wild aloes- they were all eaten! Ouch!)

Today I present TWO paintings. Pretty Bambi Boerbok is so sweet! Those pink lips turn into whiskers and he will sport a beard later on! Lucky are those with black or brown faces as the colour protect their eyes! I painted the background all white and quickly dabbed and in the stones, grass and foliage, all wet-in-wet.

The second painting is a large fantasy scene, which I later want to paint larger still! The animals and background belong to Lelieblom Farm but the girl and fence were imagined. It is called Sweet Sleep at Noon, based on a poem by Virgil. This work is an oil on canvas board and I used the little wooden artist's mannikin to work out the proportions for the girl.

Aloes in the Garden

2011-07-09T18:15:00.013+02:00

This is the year that I will have to invest in a book on aloes, as I have just planted my 12th type. In a previous post I painted Aloe mitriformis, the wild West Coast aloes that cover the rocks near the ocean.

In the meantime my own garden grew well and the aloes grew large, and some of them became prolific. I called a large aloe with ferocious thorns "Old Buster". This year at last three fat orangey-red plumes appeared on old Buster! An occasion for a painting done in acrylics on canvas board, making use of paint brushes, toothpicks and cotton buds, all as tools for creating textures.

Aloes attract a lot of birds and you will see in my photos how birds eat down from the top, treating the aloes like corn-on-the-cob! I grabbed a few seeds to dry, and left the rest for these pretty Cape Canaries.

Kabeljou Bank

2011-07-02T17:59:00.013+02:00

I have often painted here and told my readers of some of the happenings at Kabeljou Bank. This part of the coast is so beautiful but very inhospitable.

On 9 December 1896, The British Peer, commanded by Captain Jesse Jones hit the rocks while on her way from London to deliver tea, coffee, machinery, pianos and building materials to Cape Town. Even to this day, pieces of building materials wash ashore. Many lives were lost. At a salvaging operation in 1979 the bell was found. ( 33 degrees 30.40S, 18 degrees 18.17E )

Of course there are also lovely bits of history associated with Kabeljou Bank. This is the spot where Cape visitors came by horse cart for picnics in the flower season during the nineteen-twenties. They watched how the chinkeninchees were picked to export to London. And here, throughout the autumn and winter months hundreds of snoek are still hung out to dry.

My painting is a mixed media piece of black craft paint, acrylic and watercolour paints, oil pastels and oil thinning medium.

Source for The British Peer: Shipwrecks and Salvage in South Africa by Malcolm Turner.

Shark in the Bay!!!!!

2011-06-15T18:05:00.010+02:00

When I started this blog about the quiet West Coast of South Africa, I thought that I would really have to hunt for stories to tell and paint. I knew that I would sometimes have to squeeze a story out of a rock! Yet, so many things just happen. And here we have a shark in the bay a very short walk from my home!

The surprising thing is that one not usually expects sharks in such cold water! Yet we saw some monster through the binoculars one day while following the cormorants feeding. This is a baby whale shark of 6 meters long. We cannot determine why it died, but I am glad that the sea dumped it on this very quiet spot where it will not be crowded and prodded. We had only about two sunny days, so mostly a very cold tide washes over it and I hope that one of our big winter storms will return it to the ocean. Little Mitzi never blinked an eye and automatically accepted the large body in its final rest. What was truly strange was that she barked angrily every time the tide pushed in to wash over the shark!

Whale sharks have no teeth but their mouths are enormous grottos! I am so surprised by the bravery of West Coast fisherman going out on their small boats!

My quick sketch with white acrylic paint on black cartridge paper takes its style from the marks on the skin of the whale shark.

There is Nothing like Farm Food

2011-06-04T18:36:00.009+02:00

The West Coast is well known for unique eating-out experiences. Some restaurants just offer a beach shelter commonly built from natural vegetation as protection from the elements; others offer equally rough-and-ready indoor experiences. One of the most popular is the Boesmanland Farm Kitchen on lovely Langebaan Lagoon. Good food is the main thing here, more important than any props, crockery or glossy interior design. We were lucky when our friends booked a Sunday lunch here. They live overseas and move in diplomatic circles. They have been everywhere in the world, but for them the true local and ethnic experiences are of primary interest.

We each found a sawn-off log with a piece of army blanket as seating, and were given a stack of paper plates and a plate holder. The idea is to go back for more food as many times you like. We started with the famous bread made from fresh homemade potato yeast and baked in the wood-fired oven. The food is made in the traditional way in large black pots over open fires. There are traditional snoek (fish) dishes available, but I had to skip those to indulge in "boontjie-bredie" with mutton as an ingredient.

A nice local touch was the singing duo who went from table to table, singing at the tops of their voices.The kids in the lounge were very thrilled to hear the popular local songs with the occasional Lady in R-edddddddd and other requests (and innovasions) thrown in.

My painting shows the preparations for true farm coffee which will be accompanied by koesister, (also called koeksister), a local sugar syrup-dipped plaited dumpling. I loved painting this blackened oven, it gives such an old atmosphere to the place.

A Demo in Darling

2011-05-23T18:08:00.005+02:00

We had Museum Day in Darling on Saturday, and I spent the morning demonstrating oil painting. I only had two days' warning so had little time to prepare. In my studio was a large seascape where the clouds and foreground had a rough underpainting in acrylics. It was done on a day when I wanted to put down a cold sky before I forgot what it looked like.

Behind my counter in the museum I followed the acrylic cloud shapes with oil paint, softening the edges. I showed how clouds were shaded with darker and lighter shades and how some sky colour had to be blended into the edges. I then painted the waves and used a type of very light calligraphy stroke to add lots of white foam edges to them. The rocks were then painted using only raw umber, ultramarine blue and white.

During the many years that I taught art, I have always tried to have some moments of tension to make my demo interesting. So, dipping my brush into the dirty brown colour of the rocks, I approached the wet completed sky. It took a few moments to squizzle in the seagulls and highlight them with white, but I could sense how people held their breaths as it was so easy to spoil the surface of my sky at that moment. Long hours on my feet, that I will not repeat soon, but it was wonderful to experience the company and the intelligent questions put to me by very young kids! Do children just get cleverer or what?

Cold Water, Cold Sky

2011-05-13T18:55:00.007+02:00

Winter arrived so suddenly that I have stopped going to !Khwa Ttu until we have warmer weather again. This is what the ocean is looking like at the moment. Every day of my life I can just go outdoors and stare at it, but from one day to the next, it never looks the same.

I hope you can see the tranquil pool in the foreground where the water meets the beach.

Khwa Ttu # 5:Art is in their DNA!

2011-05-06T09:58:00.013+02:00

The oldest artworks in Africa are those made by the San and found in caves. I suspect that they painted on rocks in the open air as well, but the natural materials they used did not last outside. But, as it goes with excellent genes, the artistic talent of the San people is in full flourish today! Yay for all the wonderful enduring paints they now have access to!

As this is a blog where I have to paint (I have to, seriously!), I painted this passage which is the start of the hiking trail, the indigenous plant garden and the tour of the farm. How cleverly the builders have once again made use of the idea of "anticipation", leading us towards the outside areas through this story-corridor! I liked the hollow window where we could gaze to the sea in the distance....that is my beloved next-door neighbour, the ocean, just visible from !Khwa Ttu.

Now look at these wonderful wall paintings done by current San residents of !Khwa Ttu! They have such interesting schema (formulas) for doing trees. They are not daunted by branches and show the best side, like the Egyptians did. Can you see that picture where "dreams" in the form of multi-coloured dots find their way back to a large tree, symbol of the artist's "birthplace"?Don't we all treasure our past and our childhood? These walls gave San artists the means of expanding their love of story-telling and personal history.

If you are interested in more San paintings, please visit fellow blogger Roger Brown who has also been to a San Centre, the one in Botswana. He gives a link where more art can be seen. I am not going to say " to be continued" today. The Cape is suddenly cold and stormy with winter upon us. So, I will do a "second season" later, as they say on TV!

Khwa Ttu # 4: How softly they treaded!

2011-04-28T08:07:00.012+02:00

There is no painting today but only photos. As heavy rains come down daily, accompanied by extreme cold, I stay indoors and ponder on what we know of the San.

Signs of their lives which go back thousands of years were found in this whole area stretching over Yzerfontein and Darling and at the present !Khwa Ttu. Even here where I live close to Kabeljoubank one of those mysterious rounded stones with the hole in the centre was found when the neighbours laid their foundations.

How very softly they treaded, these gentle people, the first inhabitants of the Cape! They did not excavate or build or cultivate or plant! They truly left the earth as they found it! What they needed in their daily lives was only a little food and water, and some protection for the body. My few photos show all the possessions they needed. With bow and arrow the men followed and killed buck, which they cut into pieces with flintstones. They made "Boy-scout fire" and some meat and vegs were cooked. (On the tour that I will take on a sunny day, we are going to be instructed in making a fire with two sticks, oh my, I am going to fail class!)

The women and girls collected medicinal and edible plants and roots, using the heavy stones as levers on their sticks to lift out underground tubers. The San valued water most highly and collected it underground by means of grass straws pushed down into melon-like watery roots. Water could also be stored in ostrich shells and carried around like quivers by using leather straps. All clothing and blankets were made of animal skins. The only other thing they needed was entertainment, which took place in the form of stories en-acted by the elders.

Once an area was depleted of food, the San would move away, but they were not nomads in the full sense of the word, as they would gladly settle in a good spot, like here at !Khwa Ttu, The Place of Water, with many little discoveries still in store for us... (To be continued)

Khwa Ttu # 3: The Restaurant

2011-04-15T17:50:00.010+02:00

The best place to start learning about !Khwa Ttu is to visit the restaurant where everybody you meet will be willing to tell you more about the place and about themselves. We had happy chats with Michael who is so forthcoming with amazing stories about the San, and we also had conversations with trainee cooks and waiters. Everybody here is always friendly! You can meet many of the staff by clicking on the official !Khwa Ttu website.

For the children and adults living at !Khwa Ttu both traditional and formals skills are taught. Ancient crafts and skills are thus preserved, but a sense of direction into the modern world is also instilled and with it the dignity that comes with a good education and the chance of gainful employment.

I loved the shy-friendly and serene personality of Magdalena (we share a name as that is my middle name), who was very helpful and efficient at our table. In this portrait I tried to express the personality of this shining star. The photos show detail of the large cool restaurant.(Breakfast and lunches offered). The lovely "wildlife" light fittings of papermache are well chosen. Before I go, I want to recommend the pear-and-blue cheese salad. A last note: This is the 150th post and my blog is 2 years old!

Next week we will enter an interesting walkway......to be continued!

Khwa Ttu # 2: Admin Buildings

2011-04-10T16:41:00.009+02:00

!Khwa Ttu is the San Culture and Educational Centre. It concentrates on their oldest history and culture, but also, most importantly, on their place in modern society.

The San (hunter-gatherers) and the Khoikoi (herders) are the oldest indigenous people of South Africa. They were here thousands of years before the black nations moved down from the depths of Africa and before the monarchs of Europe sent ships around the Cape of Good Hope and the Dutch started the refreshment service at the Cape to provide for these ships.

My previous post awoke in many readers the sense of longing one feels when approaching !Khwa Ttu. I was happy when fellow blogger Kelley Carey McDonald used the word "evocative" in her comments. We are very aware of this feeling when we enter a walkway made of a lattice of saplings. It leads to a large cleared circle in echo of the antique San encampments. Here, in my painting (a large 24 x 18" oil painting) you can see the info and admin centre, shop and restaurant housed in a friendly building.

Am I going slow? In the next post you will meet the San at last! And after that, another interesting walkway! In coming posts we'll also see some ancient tools and hear of the miraculous talents of survival of these people. I am even one day going on a tractor ride to learn more! My children will "test" this ride to see whether mom's back can survive it! If all else fails, it will have to be a walking tour after the winter! To be continued......

!Khwa Ttu # 1: The Approach

2011-04-02T18:16:00.008+02:00

For the next few posts I am taking you to !Khwa Ttu, a 15 minute drive from home. You may pronounce it Qwatoo, as few of us could master the clicking sound preceding the word. Here the San has dwelt many centuries ago. While people in Europe built palaces and kingdoms, ships and new world colonies, the San survived through their miraculous talents of hunting and finding food in drought-struck savannas and deserts of the Southern regions of Africa.

The approach goes though fields with a desolate feel to it, only familiar to us who were born and bred in Africa. I have tried to portray this sense of Africa in my oil painting. Even hardy fynbos was trampled by these early people and the wild animals they hunted. I am gripped by a feeling of longing as we drive towards the entrance. What stories of survival are hidden here? To be continued........

Ornamental Cats and a Living Label Cat!

2011-03-23T17:17:00.012+02:00

Every so often we have to take the long road to Malmesbury where we renew car licences or passports...there is always something! The queues can be maddening. On this particular day my husband was so kind to face the bureaucracy on his own and he left me and my daughter at the very delightful Kontreispens. This shop with fresh products and beautiful crafts has a spacious coffee shop. My quickly rendered little oil painting shows one tiny corner of the decor which is brimful with cats crafted in porcelain, wood, metal and cats on mugs, plates, posters, paintings!

Then, on leaving the shop after lovely cappuchino and apple pie, I bought a bottle of olive oil. The label had a black cat on it and the name "Kasteelkat". At home I was soon on the phone and learnt from the farmer who produces the oil that they always have the real black cat from Riebeek Kasteel (a foundling) around their feet, even when parading through the olive groves. "Kasteelkat" for short!

I hope you enjoy the little painting and the photos of my visit to the coffee house. Last, but not least, the bottle of Kasteelkat olive oil is photographed next to my own porcelain kitchen cat!

Daydreaming on the Berg River

2011-03-11T13:22:00.010+02:00

Like children everywhere, the local West Coast children must get their education. But

as this little man admires a newly painted boat, his thoughts are with the real men on the deep ocean. He imagines himself pulling out a heavy net brimful of the little mullet, a plentiful fish which assures that nobody will grow hungry. He wants to stay here, work the ocean and keep a happy home full of laughter and song!

Sadly for him, the opportunities to work in and on the West Coast are not plenty as the rules and quotas for fishing become more severe.

Regular readers of my blog will recognize this scene as one of the many private jetties off Bokkom Lane near Velddrif. Being an admirer of the work of Catherine Jeffrey, I made sure of putting down the tonal values first. Once that was done, the completion was much too fast, but I will leave it at that and see how the next painting turns out.

Some happy landmarks this week: I passed 3000 unique South African visitors and 2000 Americans as well as a total of over 19000 hits.(click on Pageviews on my flag panel to see this) My blog's second birthday is 20 days away. By the way, South Africans, who are you? You are welcome to make appointments to visit my studio, seriously!!! A few people have done that and we had a super time!

Bokkom Lane

2011-03-06T19:29:00.013+02:00

A row of quaint old buildings meanders along on the bank of the beautiful pristine blue Berg River. A developer with a sharp business eye might think "aha" and see visions of malls and playgrounds. Luckily for us, this little lane is strictly protected and regarded as a national treasure. The street had looked like this for hundreds of years and will continue to be the place where a age-old custom of drying sardines is still practiced.

I have blogged extensively about Velddrif and its bokkoms, and new readers may want to catch up, so I will lead you there: On the first anniversary of my blog, I showed the photogenic little fish in Bokkoms at Velddrif. I then showed the dried product and how I personally enjoyed my bokkoms in Bokkoms turning from Silver to Gold. As part of a set of four paintings for an architect's beach home, I also showed characterful Janine who worked at one of the factories in my post called Folks and Fish #3

My current painting shows part of the dirt road with little bokkom factory-shops. I show 4 tourists, but on a normal day that will be 3 too many! More people should become interested in the old customs and try to enjoy the living history of the West Coast!

A West Coast Studio

2011-02-27T12:31:00.011+02:00

A lovely week started with a sale of 5 paintings from my French Belles series. Those were the first sales of this year. This event was followed up with a good clean-up! I needed to re-plan my work space and decided to get all my framed works on the wall as the frames get knocked all the time when they lie around. Here are photos of the completed studio.

My large collection of History of Art books are not in this room, only practical books and art magazines. You can see the work triangle formed with two antique tables where I have a small easel for sitting down, and a large one for standing. The tables are also ideal when grandchildren visit. (Alas, they all live far away) I cover them with plastic table cloths and the kids do what they like. Old paintings get a layer of gesso and become their canvasses. I keep all my old brushes for that reason too.

The Restless Ocean - completed

2011-02-18T12:07:00.010+02:00

This is the first painting that really gave me heart palpitations. It is both restless and restful! I drag it from room to room in my house. In some areas it looks far too bright, too turquoise, and in a different location it looks serene and calm!

For the last couple of years, I have taken the sea for granted, because every window on two sides of the house have a view. Now, I cannot pass a window without really staring. Since yesterday I have picked up a lot of detail that is NOT in this painting, but will be in the next. For instance: the white foam on the summit of the wave has a shadow of its own, like snow, it is not just white. Also, there is green in the large waves, not my soft peppermint whisper of a colour, but a ferocious darkish green. There is so much to learn!

These photos show the completed painting 1000mm x 750mm. I include some details in the post too, because the seagulls lifting up from the rocky outcrop was such a delightful detail, I had to do it well. There is variation in the colours of the photos too: too much blue sky when I shot them. Our best photos are taken on overcast days.

Work in Progress

2011-02-13T18:05:00.008+02:00

I have started a large painting of 760mm x 1000mm. The fearsome white canvas becomes quite tame as soon as it is covered with the first layer of paint! You work different muscles with the broad sweeps of the brush, though, and my upper arm is feeling somewhat stiff at the moment.

As a theme, I decided to do a larger version of my first painting of the year, so this is once again a view of the ocean close to home. The sky looks very serene and has a lot of areal perspective, so I am satisfied with that. But the waves are much too restless. I will not even touch the rocks or birds before this ocean starts "behaving"!

The second photo shows my studio with my work triangle formed with an old table and an old yellow-wood desk.

Salt of the Earth

2011-02-06T17:44:00.005+02:00

Salt, at some stage, was a very pricey commodity. Roman soldiers were paid in salt (salaria), which they could then use to trade for other things. Thus salary had its origin in "salt". And a good soldier was inevitably worth his salt (or not). Salt has become common over time and we seldom give it a second thought now.

Here at Velddrif on the West Coast, with its fields of brilliant white salt pans, a lot of salt finds its way into packaging and from there into the shops.This salt is extracted from sea brine which is pumped into pans to dry. There are plain and iodised table salt and some health salts with added spices, as well as coarse salt that is so attractive in a salt grinder.

But wait for it: khoisan salt, used for centuries by the first inhabitants of this country, is truly the queen of salts! It is natural, unsieved, unrefined, solar, hand harvested sea salt. The best product is "the cream of the salt" skimmed from the top and dried in a special way. The end result is Fleur de Sel salt flakes which was named one of the 5 top salts in the world. My painting shows a busy little scene at the salt works. Healthy khoisan salt is sold in all the curio shops, markets and restaurants around Velddrif and Langebaan.

We have recently bought a book with wonderful traditional khoisan recipes going back centuries. I think one has to be somewhat brave to try some recipes, but my first venture will be a rub that can be used on bread before baking, in salads or to rub meat with before cooking. The rub is made from the khoisan salt crystals, wild sage that grows in abundance in the fynbos; and some grated dry bokkoms......ah the sea, field and riverside aromas of West Coast will waft through my home!

Country Gardens on the West Coast

2011-01-30T09:26:00.010+02:00

The traditional style of a country garden is always bountiful, colourful and planted informally!

This was originally written by Christopher Lloyd in his book "The Cottage Garden" and further promoted by Gillian Rattray in a lovely South African book "In a Country Garden" which is illustrated in watercolours.

I painted two West Coast homes of neighbours last year, both homes which showed a profusion of foliage that is in harmony with the fynbos that surrounds the plots. Many indigenous plants are available at nurseries, so one can easily incorporate them. This is a wise decision as such plants are waterwise and can withstand periods of drought. Examples of such plants are the bright red Watsonia coccinea, white Zantedescia aethiopica (calla or arum lily) and lovely orange Salvia lanceolata.

Gardeners of course, also use artistic licence, so we love to incorporate lavender and daisies into our gardens and other natural looking plants that will blend in and not spread into the fynbos, as you will notice in my paintings!

In Defence of Fynbos

2011-01-23T10:54:00.007+02:00

Through more posts on this blog than I can remember, I have sung the praises of fynbos (fine and small-leaved shrub-lands which grow in poor soils). Yet not everyone is of the same sentiment. In our national Sunday newspaper (16 January 2011), a popular journalist listed fynbos (hopefully tongue-in-cheek) as "overrated ": "...heath and heather are found all over the world, but considered a religion in South Africa", she wrote. Many botanists will be able to counter-act this very unfortunate view of fynbos which may sadly be taken to heart by lots of the paper's readers. I can only react with the knowledge I have.

Here on the West Coast, fynbos act as a stabiliser for loose rocks and also restrain the encrouchment of sand from the beach. It is the natural habitat of ground-nesting birds and harbours a complete eco-system where a stunning variety of birds, snakes, meerkat, voles, field mice and small buck are part of the endless cycle of survival. The fynbos forms part of the great and world-famous Cape Floral Kingdom. To bring in a commercial viewpoint, the spring flower show contributes greatly to the economy of the region.

In my painting of fynbos, I show a piece of rocky outcrop where people can hike along to explore the long walk from Kabeljoubank in the direction of Yzerfontein.

To end my defence of fynbos, I quote from " The Illustrated History of the Countryside" a book about Britain by Oliver Rackham (2003):

"In the darkest days of ericophobia, the voices of Gilbert White, John Clare, George Borrow and Thomas Hardy were public reminders of the glory and mystery and freedom of the heath. But few listened: people do not value heathland until they have lost nine-tenths of it."

I do love that word 'ericophobia' to indicate a "disease" of carelessness. All along our rural roads, extensive ploughing, developments and forestation are taking the place of fynbos........

It is good to be back!

2011-01-17T20:09:00.008+02:00

Every year our beloved West Coast seems to get more and more popular. The R27 can become so congested that it is hard to get onto that road when we need to. Locals just burrow in and stay put, but we decided to go away this year. So 5000km by car, many sights in this lovely country, and many visits and adventures later, I am back! I enjoyed the Waterberg area tremendously and that is where I got bitten by a tick! (News travel fast and I sincerely thank everybody who wished me a speedy recovery from the tick-bite fever!) We also visited Johannesburg, Pretoria, Bloemfontein, Durban and Plettenberg Bay.

Today I am surely cured and feeling well! I made two paintings this morning under which I could sign the new date 2011. Both paintings have the elements that make up the West Coast: sky and sea, rocks and sand and fynbos. We have magical summer days at the moment! It is good to be back!

West Coast Wishes

2010-12-18T21:19:00.008+02:00

This will be my last post of 2010. For me it was a lovely year with many West Coast paintings sold both locally and all over the world, thanks to the Internet.

To wish you well, I am using a framed effect I made in watercolours, containing our most popular images: the boats, the cottages, fisher folks, a gull and a delicious pot of mussels!

Diamonds on the West Coast

2010-12-09T17:22:00.007+02:00

Diamonds, like all other products, have been given to man to utilize and create jobs. If you are not into the romantic side of these blingy bits, consider that they are also very useful in industry because of their hardness and strength.

I found these lovely colourful diamond trawlers at Lambert's Bay, the best area for maritime diamond mining. This industry has only been commercially viable since the 1990's. Seabed crawlers can be remote controlled but mostly divers are needed. These divers, who can only work about six days per month because of our famous stormy waters, have to work in the cold of the Atlantic Ocean for up to 8 hours. When they spot diamond-bearing gravel on the seabed they direct the suction hoses towards it.

The gravel is then pumped onto sorting tables. When the boats return, the diamonds are taken ashore. What I loved about this scene was the hollow hoses floating on top of the water, providing seating for hundreds of Cape Cormorants.

Purple Ragwort (Senecio arenarius)

2010-12-04T07:57:00.010+02:00

I am painting the last of the purple ragwort flowers of the season! Because I water my garden twice a week some of them survived a bit longer than they would in the field.

Ragwort make a wonderful display in springtime, colouring the fields around us to a purple landscape. The flowers are pretty but poisonous to humans and livestock as it is said to affect the liver. Yet my beloved voles, which I painted a few months ago, are vegetarians and find ragwort such a treat. It is just too cute to see the flowers in those little hand-like paws! I have found that if you move past a window or stir a curtain the voles are gone! They are extremely sensitive. Maybe the early morning sun blinded them a little this morning, so I stood behind the glass and got the photos I have been yearning for. I hope to invest in a telephoto lens for my camera, to catch some better shots in future. In the meantime I present Mr and Mrs Vole eating their purple ragwort breakfast.

I also paint these purple flowers to celebrate my brand-new purple blogspot : French Belles by Marie Theron. (http://frenchbelles.blogspot.com/) Be sure to visit this blog and see me having fun with small paintings and fashion!

Happy Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T11:30:00.011+02:00

A year has passed and again I break away from the West Coast theme to wish my American children and friends Happy Thanksgiving. My daughter Helen in Texas is cooking up a storm for her family and friends. I enjoyed Thanksgiving so much when I was there in November 2000. Ah, the yams, oven-baked with layers of apples in between, really complemented the turkey which my sun-in-law baked in an outside oven! Spending very little on "props and flowers", she always creates a most beautiful table setting. Yesterday she told me: " Mom, we embrace this holiday, because there are always so much to be thankful for!"

The friends I want to send these wishes to are the few I know in person and the many kind people I have met and chatted with in the blogging world and the social media. I include the over 1600 secret and very silent US people who have visited my blog the last eighteen months. Enjoy, everyone!

This painting of a very South African-looking pumpkin farm is part of about 10 paintings I made when I was still planning my blog, then of course I decided on another formula of smaller and historically correct works. So these paintings have not been framed or exhibited. They fit nowhere in my oevre, but Mitzy the Maltese thinks that they do give some colour to her corner!

Darling Angels

2010-11-20T17:20:00.013+02:00

We could not believe that such a day was possible in the middle of summer: cold, wet, windy, the Full Cape Treatment! But, it was the day of the opening of the "Angels" Exhibition in our closest little town, Darling. I thought I would say very little (only this: The glass of Ormonde wine was very welcome!) and rather show lots of photos of the work of my closest artist friends and myself. My own contribution was two very sweet angels, first and second photos and one serious one. There is also a photo of the Mantis Art Gallery where it was held.

I need to say more of my serious angel. I saw this image as a large sculpture in Budapest when I had a solo exhibition there. It was midday and my photo showed a shadow so dark, it looked like a sharp gash through the sculpture. I loved the idea of going against all the rules in art to show a very strong vertical like that through the painting. It can resemble a Cross....and with it evoke some inner emotion and loneliness.

For this exhibition we concentrated on small 8x8 affordable artworks.

The Fiscal Shrike

2010-11-17T19:22:00.007+02:00

I took a photo of the lovely program for the Slice of Life Exhibition. How neat the gallery looks! This show with it's mass of even-sized paintings will run until the 21st of January 2011. I hope to receive some news about my set of birds! I could have painted 5 gannets and 5 of seagulls, but am so fond of sets of four, that I filled the remaining two blocks with something different. So here is the image of my little shrike.

As you know, there are no trees here on the West C0ast, so all the small birds around here perch themselves on top of the bushes that we call "fynbos". The fiscal shrike is such a cute round little creature as he scans the world all around for insects. I have never came upon a fiscal shrike larder here, but as a child we had a barbed wire fence and my dad would call us every time he found a larder....oh my, what a grizzly experience that was for a little girl!!! But I never missed a chance to see crickets, worms and grasshoppers impaled on pieces of barbed wire, left there to dry in the breeze like our fisherman do with the snoek and bokkoms!

Do you know the Fiscal Shrike? It lives all over our country, but this little one was sitting only a few meters from the ocean.

Chincherinchees (Ornithogalum thyrsoides)

2010-11-10T16:58:00.011+02:00

With the end of the wildflower season in sight, I want to tell you about the flowers you probably know as "chinks". Summer is getting warmer and all over the fields they are now drying off.

The Greeks, and some sources say the Romans, would describe something that was amazing, incredible and wonderful as "birds milk" which in translation would be ornis + gala. From there the scientific name Ornithogalum. South Africans claimed to have heard a ching sound when picking at the stems and that gave us the common name for this flower: Chincherinchees.

You know by now that Kabeljoubank where I live is absolutely steeped in history and culture. Here the British Peer and her crew perished in 1896, and we still see pieces of their red bricks ballast, rounded and shrunk by ocean movement to the size of pebbles. Here, also, if people will look where I direct them, (a photographers dream....but nobody is interested) the process of snoek drying in the seabreeze can be seen.

But this is the nicest Kabeljoubank story of all: Between the two world wars, tourists who had travelled to Cape Town by ocean liner or train, would sometimes in spring and early summer hire a horse cart and travel the distance to Kabeljoubank for a picnic. They admired the beautiful views, the bluest ocean, the fields of spring flowers. One of the sights they saw was the picking of chincherinchees (in bud form) to be exported to Covent Garden where they were sold, a popular flower which can last for weeks in a vase.

Of course my vases at home bear nothing of the sort, as all our flowers in the Cape Flower Kingdom are now protected! To be admired, photographed, sketched, but never to be picked! The first image is my painting, the second the veld next to my studio with ragwort and chinkerinchees, then a bunch I photographed at the annual Wild Flower Show and lastly a little macro photo I took. Do not forget to let me know if you have ever seen or grown "chinks"!

A Slice of Life Exhibition

2010-11-07T19:47:00.011+02:00

After all the anticipation to attend the opening, the day of week, the time of day and the great distance prevented me from attending the opening of the exhibition. Avril who owns the gallery wrote so well about it on the morning after that I am going to quote him here: " Difficult to describe unique events like these. Crazy, ridiculous, exciting, enjoyable, all at the same time. Maybe "memorable" is a fair description. Many, many guests and few serious problems. One of those events one has to attend to really appreciate.

Since the gallery opened for business on 20 September 2007 I always wanted to do a real "opening", where the paintings are "unveiled". And this was the golden opportunity to do it. Imagine the curtains coming down and 600 paintings becoming fully visible all at once. I enjoyed the exercise, and according to all accounts most guests did!

In my photos this week I show my ten works together, followed by all my seagull paintings.

Living here next to the coast, I can see a lot of individualism in the seagulls. The leaders, the lookouts, the extremely young and the old and overweight birds all represent themselves...Again I "humanize" them, which I cannot help. Look at the gull I was able to get very close to....he really thought the rope was a safeguard against an approaching human. Then there is the group who seems to wait for a signal from their leader, something like: On your marks, get set, GO! I hope you enjoy my seagull paintings!

More and more Gannets!

2010-11-02T20:04:00.011+02:00

By now I think everyone must realize that I cannot let go of the gannets of Lambert's Bay. Suddenly I see seabirds in my future as an artist: going into more and more detail and entering the world of Wildlife Art by painting the precious and protected birds of the West Coast.

The great exhibition of 630 works by 63 artists, called "A Slice of Life" opens this week in Somerset West. On the 10 wooden blocks I received, I used 4 for my gannets. I showed one piece last week, and here are the three others. You can see how they all look together in the first photo.

To Market, to Market

2010-10-27T18:39:00.008+02:00

This gannet painting sized 8x8 is one of the ten paintings I created for the exhibition I told you about last week. How to describe this amazing concept? The show is called "A Slice of Life" and will show 630 works by 63 South African artists, picked by Avril Gardiner from all corners of the country. Our opening is Wednesday 3rd November 2010. The 630 'slices of life' will be displayed on one wall and will be revealed at 6pm sharp.

Let me assure you, not one of us artists are even allowed to view THE WALL before opening night.I have seen photos of the work of Salome Briers who painted scenes from the Bokaap and District 6, very colourful and beautiful!

My viewer counter here on the blog show that nearly over 2600 unique South Africans have visited my blog. Who ARE you? (like they say in almost every Hollywood film)....you are invited to The Liebrecht Gallery to attend this event! For my friends who cannot attend, I will keep you updated!

The West Coast at Springtime

2010-10-23T12:58:00.006+02:00

I have been working on 10 paintings for an exhibition and finished the last one yesterday! They are all West Coast themes and meant for an invited show of 63 artists each doing 10 paintings of the popular 8 x 8 size. "A SLICE of LIFE "Exhibition will show all 630 paintings on one gallery wall!

Before I start blogging and chatting about these completed works, I would love to show my favourite photos of the coastal flower displays not far from my home during Springtime.

Gardening on the West Coast

2010-10-19T17:57:00.011+02:00

In planning a West Coast garden, I decided to take my cue from the surrounding veld. There are no trees in the pristine fynbos, so I did not plant any. This is not a coast of waving palm trees and huge tall plants, and I often see people planting them because they love trees/want shade/want birds/need something tall as a focal point, or for whatever reason. But surely one would then attract the wrong sort of birds, because our Cape Robins, Francolins and Black Oystercatchers sleep on the ground or in low vegetation.

Another rule would be to have no flowers that will self-seed and start spreading into the fynbos. Nasturtiums are a no-no! I plant so that there is always a great display of colour. This is a long narrow garden and I want colour as far as the eye can see. By not trimming and allowing plants to grow together there are never any weeds as there is no room for them. Because of harsh rainless summers you need plants that do not need a lot of water. We are planning to make some "green" plans this year to water the patch of lawn.

In the photos you will notice that I allow the wild pelargoniums, sorrel, watsonias, Livingstone daisies (bokbaai vygies), all types of aloes and ragwort to grow where they want to. I make no division between wild and cultivated plants.

My garden has been photographed by many people who can see it over the walls, and are thrilled by all the colour! This is a garden where I only spend about 4 days working in a year, while the buffalo grass grows vertical and needs trimming about every third week only.

A Wish for the West Coast

2010-10-11T18:30:00.005+02:00

When you have been away for a month, you will always look anew at your home turf. In Pretoria, I was charmed by the very positive outlook of people, the lovely climate, the lush parks and gardens. Something that is almost a phenomena is the ability of people up there to create! The markets, whether they are permanent, or held weekly or annually, just have so much that is beautiful and of a high quality.

Back home, I need to make a few fast sketches of some boats at Velddrif. There is a large hall, quite spacious at the little harbour and it is divided into market stalls, but the spark is not there and the visitors are scarce. Seeing that the West Coast is rather poor, it would have been lovely if the same quality home bakes and crafts that we see a few kilometers further in Paternoster could be offered here. This prettiest and most historical of harbours just do not see the visitors it could receive.

Lately, we have seen far too many impersonal malls appear on the West Coast, it would therefore be so meaningful to see this great space at Velddrif become something much more craft-friendly.

Here, once again, I have painted a colourful little boat in the mouth of the Berg River at Velddrif. As you can see it is not seriously realistic! I preferred to play around with some designs, like those repetitive rings!

A West Coast morning exhibition in Pretoria

2010-10-04T09:19:00.017+02:00

The moment that I met a new friend, Zelda, on Facebook a year ago, she enthusiastically offered me an informal morning exhibition in Pretoria. To make things easy, I packed mostly smaller and unframed paintings. We could not wish for a lovelier Pretoria spring morning!.

1)The first photo shows the imposing gates of Zelda's home with a mass of sweetpeas in bloom.

2)Soon I had some flowers in my hand for a playful photo-session with my graceful hostess.

3)The paintings stood everywhere between roses, silver bowls and in the pretty garden. This painting of a lighthouse was the first to sell.

4) The cupcakes which the guests had with long girly-type drinks or champagne.

5) More artful cupcakes, as delicious as they look!

6) The antique roses that filled the house.

7) Gentle background music and French songs by Esperance.

8) A tearful meeting with Debbie whom I have met on blogging, Facebook and RedBubble! (The tears of emotion were mine!) And Debbie bought a Paternoster painting of mine!

At the end of the day, I have sold 9 paintings and gave away two little ones as gifts. And of course, Zelda got the autumn doll painting that she loved.

We are the Custodians of Nature

2010-09-29T07:24:00.005+02:00

"Man, the Hero" is sitting on his pedestal. How big is his task to reign over the earth, yet he looks quite smug and loves to be admired! As consumers we are so totally responsible for the balance in our world. Of course we may use certain things, but how much can we safely claim for ourselves? As consumers and travellers we need the oil that is transported in huge amounts over the oceans. How can it be done more safely without spoiling our beautiful planet? We all know how a great spill can effect our birds!

We have little control over the harvesting of hundreds of thousands of seabird eggs yearly in societies where it is the main source of protein for humans. Closer to home, cats, with the blessing of their vets, insist on their favourite brands of tinned food, while at the fish factories fleets of boats are going out to trawl the oceans for the tons of fish needed to be processed as pet food for the supermarket shelves, leaving less for our seabirds!

For tourists and photographers, visiting the gannets is a breathtaking experience, yet care must be taken while large stone buildings are erected for people to watch birds from. Busy, noisy and dusty human activities can be stressful for the birds indeed. Tourism provides the funds needed for caring and monitoring the birds, so we hope that the pros outweigh the cons when we build these bird hides! The habits of the birds can be carefully monitored from here, but sometimes selected birds will have to carry a ring with data inscribed in it. Scientists have noticed that the ringing of a gannet can put the pair off breeding for a whole season!

My big-headed little man on his pedestal! I hope he can keep the balance! (The cartoon was done in great haste and from the imagination as I had to leave the West Coast for my solo exhibition in Pretoria.) I would love to hear your thoughts on this sensitive topic.

The Gannet Colony

2010-09-19T16:45:00.010+02:00

They are up with the first light in the morning and the daily choir of thousands of decibels hit the morning air above Bird Island. I suppose each shouts out his own hunger and intentions for fishing, and with such a crowd, there may also be a lot of admonitions to little ones not to get lost! Speaking of that: it is amazing how the parent gannets land back in their own space after flight and always know their own little black blobs from the surrounding chicks!

With creatures living so close to each other, there is apt to be some tension. Gannets relieve the tension by doing the neck-rubbing ceremony with the birds working on their nerves. It is not a mating ceremony. In this large painting, I have painted this beautiful and graceful movement. Well, here we have a lesson from the gannets: if a guy or lady grabs the parking spot we were already entering (!!!!), maybe we should shake hands or give them a little hug! See? The tension will be gone!

Further in this panorama, you will see the largish chicks, the hesitant flyers and the airborne ones. In the final and 5th post on this theme (which may only appear in ten day's time unless I get an internet connection where I am going), I will post the last of this series on the gannets of Lambert's Bay! The theme will be MAN and his relationship with the threatened birds.

Fear of Flying?

2010-09-13T06:52:00.053+02:00

This post comes to you from Pretoria where my West Coast exhibition takes place this week. The last week before leaving I painted enough gannets, photographed them and put them on disc. How easy it is to put your work in your purse nowadays!! The same cannot be said of all the paintings we hauled up here!

The time watching the gannets from the bird hide on Bird Island at Lambert's Bay was one of the most exciting times of my life. One can never get enough of that lovely mass of soft yellow heads, interspersed with the black "Pacman"-like, feature-less baby gannets! Soon, however, I started focussing on the spectacle of their flying.

The soil where they trample around is very hard, and they have a strip that they use for taking off, with many bodies actually walking through it. So to find a clear few yards to run before rising from the ground is difficult. Again and again they try, lose courage or halt to avoid a wanderer in their way and go back to try again. Flap-flap goes the feet designed for swimming over the hard crusty earth. I promise you that an onlooker can become utterly nervous! The eventual take-off is not very smooth but quite faltering!

On the edges, where the rocks are, others peek over the precipice before throwing themselves into the air. There are akward moments when they almost hang in the air, trying to find the proper movements. As if my readers are not upset enough by this time, I also have to tell you that the landings on those enormous feet looks like a great plopping down! I was saddened but not surprised to read in Nelson's book on seabirds that some gannets can injure or kill themselves in flying accidents! Here, close to the earth they have their worst close shaves with danger.

But of course, what takes place in the first moments of alighting is absolutely forgotten the moment they stretch out in the air, and form a single line from beak to tail, while the wings unfold to an enormous, finely tipped wingspan. Suddenly they are the most gracious and effective of flyers who are able to divebomb the sea at such a speed that it carries them down a full ten meters to a supply of fish who never saw it coming! Yeah, for the gannets, can you feel the relief and freedom of those flyers as they do the auronautical tricks they were born for.

Looks count!!!

2010-09-02T18:00:00.013+02:00

For the next two posts I have painted a set of bright decorative canvasses, of 8x10 of which this painting is the first. With so many shows coming up, I am going to need smaller paintings. But I am also working on a large painting of a gannet colony, so it will be back to normal soon.

Almost everything in the physical appearance of the beautiful gannets have a function! Strange that such lovely birds have these really large chicks with absolutely no facial features besides their loud-loud mouths! Imagine a dark charcoal grey Pacman!

The gannet is brilliant white for the purpose of attracting lots of others when they dive for the fish. From the depths of the ocean, looking up towards the sky, the colour white is not easy to see. So when a lot of these birds hit the ocean, there is great confusion among the fish and they don't have much of a chance!

I could not find a function for the soft yellow heads, maybe it's only for decoration. Now the eyes! A gannet has binocular eyesight. The pale blue eyes are most impressive, and have strong black lines all around, which is naked featherless skin with a cooling function. I have painted so many of these gannets that I see another little bird on each side of the face. Can you see it too? Or is it supposed to mimic the shape of a fish when the gannet dives?

The beak is something to be reckoned with. Liz wrote to me regarding the beaks: "Gannets! I remember washing them during an oil spill! Vicious beaks! " Well done, kind and brave, Liz! Today I also post the photo of the friendly-looking gannet behind the glass of the bird hide, so that you can see the nicks made by these beaks! I love this almost magical photo with the markings and feather-dust and the light filtering through. I took it a few years ago and has been entering it in countless photo competitions but I seem to be the only person liking it!

Down the neck is a gracious black line, and again it is naked skin with a cooling function. The wings of the gannet does not lie flat like in garden birds, but they have thick folds. When the gannet unfolds its wings, the very wide wingspan is a wonder to behold, the width is unexpected. There is a black spot on each wing and the end feathers are black.

Last to inspect is the amazing grey fully webbed feet. Great for standing in the colony, for landing flatly, and can be folded out of the way when flying and diving. In the next post I will discuss their flying in greater detail!

Meet the Gannets

2010-08-30T19:20:00.011+02:00

You don't like crowds and all those loud holiday entertainments? The answer to avoiding all that is to drive North all along the unspoiled West Coast. As my blog is now stretching to distant places we need to stay overnight at our destinations. So off we went to spend a weekend at my favourite place, Lambert's Bay. As we arrived, the whole area spelt out the theme of quiet restfulness. A leasurely meal of one big crayfish with lovely Cape wine dealt with Friday evening.

With what excitement I crossed the foot bridge to Bird Island the next morning! There is a very modern but tastefully built hide at the end of the pathway. "We have 24,000 gannets here" a friendly lady told us. Apparently these precious birds are counted continuously. I spent hours observing them from the hide and will have much to tell (and paint) over the next few posts.

There is a strange story playing out in this painting! The island is also the home of Cape fur seals, introduced to the area in 1985. These fur seals, as we know, have had a hard time in the past and are now furiously protected. And in Lambert's Bay it is not the cats and dogs fighting but the gannet lovers and the seal lovers. Seals greedily devour gannet eggs and chicks, and this may lead to dwindling numbers of gannets.

But the seals have a right of living space too. The solution at the moment is but a simple plan. The seals are carefully watched and chased away by shouting at them if they go near eggs or chicks, and here you see it: a man keeps watch from a boat rowed by his team-mate, and the gannets can breed in peace. Can you see the seals in my third image? I wonder what one calls this man? Not a "horse whisperer", but a seal shouter maybe?

The painting ended up being bought by a customer in faraway America!

A Folksong for the Berg River

2010-08-25T16:53:00.015+02:00

As I walk along the Berg River I always wonder why so few people do that...is it really nicer to walk through a busy touristy type of place in preference to experiencing this pure, honest earthy national treasure called Bokkom Lane ? The boats have two-stroke engines nowadays, but I am happy to report that even though some of them really "cowboy" it over the estuary, the birds are totally unperturbed. The pelicans, flamingoes and waders go about their business, while the gulls would optimistically follow...hoping for a morsel of fish.

I want to take you back in time when a little sailing cutter called "Die Alibama" would hitch a ride on a gentle breeze upriver to collect cut reeds which were used for roofing and for matting of beds. In our colourfully expressive Afrikaans language, in which some words are derived from the Malay culture and language, it would be called dekriet and matjiesgoed. The boat would return to Cape Town and feed the busy industry where a new bed was made for every Malay bride to be presented to her all made up, shiny, frilly and lacy, on her wedding day.

And here is where the famous song "Daar kom die Alibama" finds its origin. It refers to the cutter which brought in the bedding material to make the rietkooi (reed bed). This song is the main song on festivals like "Tweede Nuwejaar". (I tell all about the Minstrel Carnival on Tweede Nuwejaar in an earlier blog). No Minstrel Carnival will pass without "Die Alibama" and the beds being remembered in song. I wonder if the thousands of singers pouring down Adderley Street in Cape Town know the role of the Berg River in their favourite song?

There is another boat with a history in the West Coast. That is the American boat "Alabama", linked with Saldanha Bay and I must tell its story some time! How confused the two stories became over time, I cannot tell! Local folklore can be like that!

Delight in the Detail

2010-08-18T17:40:00.010+02:00

The words 'informal' and 'relaxed' sum up the style of the West Coast. I am taking you to a restaurant on the beach at Paternoster, so please leave all suits and high heels behind! We can take a long stroll on the beach to watch the colourful fishing boats coming in, photograph the seagulls and then step up to Voorstrandt Restaurant, hardly shaking the sand from our feet, and find ourselves an outside seat with sea views. The restaurant is situated in an antique tin fisherman's cottage more than a hundred years old.

I was so thrilled when I first saw the welcoming wall in the entrance on the street side of the building. Against the 'heritage green' corrugated wall there is a piece of wood from a real shipwreck. The flaked red paint forms the perfect contrast to the building. I also loved the old bottles that was picked up among the flotsam at some stage, and the buoys and ropes! A very large blackboard holds a daily message for visitors. In painting this scene, the old wood got the most attention! In my art box I have a triangularshaped palette knife that got its first job here in scraping on texture, and it worked perfectly!

I almost forgot! What shall we eat? I am in search of the perfectly grilled mullet (harders), my favourite! As you are not from here, I suggest a more 'tame' fish dish, some yellowtail with butternut, creamed spinach and a few chips? Sounds good? Let's order!

An article about me

2010-08-17T18:24:00.015+02:00

An article about me was published in SA ART TIMES AUGUST 2010, and is called MARIE THERON The Real West Coast:

THE WATERCOLOUR YEARS: Her first love was watercolours and she spent most of the eighties and nineties exhibiting and demonstrating the medium, designing stationery and doing book and botanical illustration. Lecturing at Bellville Art Centre, Constantia and the Western Cape countryside, hundreds of students benefitted from her watercolour courses.

MIDDLE PERIOD: Marie retired from teaching and entered a hectic period doing large colourful acrylics. From 2001 to 2004 she held several solo exhibitions, for instance in Budapest with sales to the South African and Canadian embassies and one painting ending up in the collection of President …….of Croatia. It was followed by an exhibition “ The Timeless Charm of Croatia” which opened in The Old Cape Town House, then moved to Sandton Art Gallery and The Croatian Embassy in Pretoria. The exhibition was a sell-out with the artist retaining 4 paintings for her own collection. It also led to commissions from the Croatian first secretary for his new Embassy post in Toronto. In 2005 The Pretoria Art Association commissioned paintings from 20 artist throughout Africa for a world touring exhibition “The Challenge of the Tie” where the role of Croatia as home of the tie was celebrated .Marie’s painting “Sister Power” now hangs in the permanent collection of Galleria Cravatica in Zagreb.

THE REAL WEST COAST: A profound change took place when Marie settled at the seaside on the lovely West Coast. So –called “West Coast Art” lacks in sincerity and makes use of stagnant little make-believe scenes of boats and cottages. It is the artist’s most passionate ambition to put this right. She visits and paints throughout the region and posts both paintings and history of the West Coast on her very popular and widely read blog, ARTIST MARIE THERON CHRONICLES THE WEST COAST OF SOUTH AFRICA. All the images used in this profile are from her West Coast blog.

This article gave me a lot of joy. The magazine is unfortunately difficult to get on the normal circuit of book shops and news agencies. A few of my friends could get hold of a copy at art galleries or larger city stores. It can be read online in pdf format for a short period only.

I am often asked about that painting in Zagreb called "Sister Power." As you can read above, it resides in the Acedemia Cravatica. Surely, in Croatia, they are extremely proud of having given birth to the tie. Imagine paying some South African and other artists to give their interpretation of a tie! Go to the gallery's fan page on Facebook and see the fun festivals and mile-long ties, etc!In my painting I used the tie as a token of power and painted ties around the necks of young African girls, symbolizing the future of women in Africa.

All quiet here in the mist!

2010-08-09T19:18:00.013+02:00

This is my third post in which I will try to portray the tranquility and quiet simplicity of life on the West Coast. This scene is very close to home now. The plain hedge made of saplings form the only fence between our home and the wilder parts of the reserve.

A little sparrow passed by on a misty morning and rested on the fence for a moment. My guest photographer, Jon Ivins, captured the image on camera and I used several techniques to portray it. This included very wet paint on a thin wet layer of white acrylic paint, wet-on-wet painting, and some scratching out. The woody rails and the sparrow were painted with dry undiluted acrylics.

The other photos were taken close to my home. Aren't they super? Jon is a professional photographer who covers great sporting events, but his food photos may also make your mouth water on the wall of a fast food place! Or else, he aims at nature, in all it's beauty, or even go underwater to show a paddling event from another angle. I think I will disclose that he is also my son-in-law! You can visit the wonderful world of JON IVINS at www. jonivins.com.

The Simple Life

2010-08-04T22:57:00.011+02:00

On the Langebaan Lagoon in the West Coast National Park there lives a man alone. He is 81 and has lived here in solitude since birth. He does not read, neither write, and never got married. When I first saw the photo album which inspired this post, I was in awe of the wonderful neatness and simplicity of such a life, and the obvious character and integrity of the owner. I felt that in reality there was nothing lacking in this existence and I have subsequently returned to the album many times to ponder on "the simple life".

My painting shows a little outhouse, a washing line and some bokkoms drying in the fresh lagoon breeze. I am sure you will also love the comfort and tidyness of everything inside the cottage as shown in the photos.

My thanks for the inspiration goes once again to the lady who can pick out the essential order of everything, photographer Mary Ann Bosch. Her portraits of the Lagoon gentleman and pictures of the rest of his home was and always will be a special treat.

The Beauty of Silence

2010-07-27T18:41:00.011+02:00

The appeal of the West Coast lies in the great expanses of the landscape, the stark simplicity that is so easy to find around here. Follow our coast and you will see long stretches of pristine and lonely beaches. Sometimes there might be a man and his dog, a solitary angler, a backpacker!

Because it is winter here, I make use of photos taken by guest photographers. Today you meet the vibrant and well-known Yzerfontein personality, Mary Ann Bosch. She is an elegant and charismatic lady, darting around chatting, cooking and serving diners in their restaurant, Kaijaiki! She runs a B&B too. Because of her deep empathy with the human condition, she studies hard to be a life coach and will soon graduate in her course in Counselling and Communication. Her plan is open her own clinic in her peaceful seaside home near Yzerfontein. Also, with her first professional assignment as photographer, a Saldanha Bay wedding within a few months, she will once again have her hands full!

Busy, busy!!But to bring her whole being into balance , Mary Ann steps out on the beach with her camera, loving the early mornings and the time of dusk. She replenishes her soul in line with her motto: "I cannot give when I am empty." I thank her for the inspiration for this painting, from her photo of Langebaan lagoon that speaks so well of the "beauty of silence".

Paternoster Wedding

2010-07-20T17:09:00.011+02:00

Anri was born on the West Coast and was fortunate as a young adult to spend five years on a farm outside Paternoster. She knew then that she would like to get married here one day. Young people almost always leave our quiet shores and Anri worked in both the Netherlands and then settled in London. Here she met Rodrigo and the dream took shape!

As I painted Anri, her feet grounded in the soil (ah, in fact it is very clean sand!) of her birthplace and her eyes on the wonderful Rodrigo, the painting started to become very symbolic. They are turned away from us, towards their future overseas. The little boat points to a distant place too. I chose very controlled colours so that everything would echo the sea, sand and sky. Don't you just love the eye contact of the couple, fingers entwined and the groom's pants gamely rolled up?And of course, that lovely dress that leaves us speechless!

My thanks to West Coast photographer Marie Malherbe for the use of some of her material for the painting..

Chimneys and Saplings

2010-07-15T18:57:00.009+02:00

150 x 200 Acrylic on canvas board.

I am still finding lovely details in the homes of Paternoster, details that salute the cottages of the past. A chimney, of course is most important. All the fishermen's cottages used to have enormous wood-firing ovens inside with plastered outside chimneys. I showed many of these chimneys in cottages in my earlier posts last year. Here you see a modern version.

Then there were saplings, the almost straight thin branches used for ceilings, and in my painting used as veranda coverings. In my own home saplings give a cozy atmosphere to the main bedroom. There are 3 paintings in this little set now, and I will leave it at that. The photo shows the set together.

It is shiveringly cold in the Cape at the moment. Not being able to leave the house or to travel at all, I have rounded up some friends who gave me photographic material for the next three West Coast stories. There are some paintings taking form at this very moment. The first of these: another West Coast bride! Remember Canadian beauty, Melissa in my older blog The Bride and the Sea? So I am painting my second wedding painting!

Boat Planter

2010-07-07T17:35:00.006+02:00

I am still captivated by the detail that makes up the brilliant white, postcard pretty Paternoster! So, what is in fact happening here is that another set of paintings is developing.

The town's historical role of fishing village is nowadays also echoed in the newer homes. Here we see an old boat painted, anchored with some rocks from the ocean and turned into an attractive planter. This is not a one-off idea! I love the fact that there are street upon street of these boats in front of the cottages. In my painting, the flowers are once again orange, the complimentary colour for the blue shutters.

p/s I am reading through this post many months later! Strange that this little painting remains in the Top Five most popular posts of all my work! It was sold in Pretoria during my exhibition.

Windows and Walls

2010-07-05T08:57:00.007+02:00

Driving through the small town of Paternoster, I am starting to concentrate on the lovely details that make up the whole of this successful architectural venture. Of course, because this is a rather chatty sort of blog, you must refer to the experts if you want to build a proper West Coast cottage. The information will be available at VASSA ( Vernacular Architecture Society South Africa).

The walls should be roughly plastered. As the first freed slaves and early fisherman a few hundred years ago did not have all the tools, one should try to emulate the true texture of early West Coast cottages! The cement was made in lime kilns as I have explained in an older blog. This lime was also mixed with salt to "paint" the walls white.

Windows and doors were made from the salvaged wood from the many ships that met their ends on this coast. As the ships were painted for protection, the locals would always try to get hold of paint to repaint their woodwork. Blue and sometimes green were the preferred colours. Today the (mostly new) blue shutters, doors and windows give unity to the street scenes. I loved the way the orange aloes complimented the blue shutters in this scene. And please do not miss the rocks on the roof placed as if they are anchoring the corrugated roof and chimney. Ah, detail is everything!

Cape Columbine Lighthouse

2010-07-01T14:44:00.007+02:00

The Cape Columbine Lighthouse is on the South side of Paternoster where it is built high on Castle Rock in a nature reserve. The rewards from spices and porcelain from the East must have outweighed the dangers for many merchant ships from Europe. How else would they sail along the treacherous West Coast of the Cape with its offshore reefs, knowing that they could easily share the watery grave of in excess of 200 ships?

This very attractive lighthouse is unusual in shape as it was built in the popular Art Deco style of the 1930's. It was the last manned lighthouse in South Africa and was a sensation because of its flashing lamp that replaced earlier oil- and- wick systems. It is visible for 32 nautical miles and the safety of current-day ships is also assured by radio signals and a foghorn.

I finished this scene some days ago. I added these close-up seagulls to the composition. But now I am somewhat puzzled and doubtful....can such a scene where the artist is supposed to be on ground level, but a bird's eye view prevails, really exist? Nevertheless, we will let it pass!

As I write this last paragraph prior to having my blog printed, I have to marvel at how difficult it is for an artist to appreciate a recently- finished painting. Now I am able to call this work successful! It was featured many times on RedBubble where it is available as a card or print!

A little bit "French"!

2010-06-26T12:57:00.013+02:00

"Die Winkel op Paternoster" (it translates as : The Shop at Paternoster) is probably the most photographed building in this postcard- pretty town.

I decided to focus on some interesting detail and liked this French-looking corner where the three red shapes met. The red objects are: the barn door, the frame of the blackboard menu, and the red dragon on the antique enamel signboard (Mobiloil). I call this scene a little bit French because Afrikaans-speaking families have French genes among others!

Wow, I realize now that I am o-o-o-o-old enough to remember village shops with enamel signs! The rust from the screws would run down the paint of the outer walls! At about five years of age I carried our freshly-laid eggs in a brown-paper bag to a shop called "Driewald Kontantwinkel". The shop owners gave us credit for Mom's lovely eggs!

Reminiscing aside, this shop at Paternoster is a 'must visit'. Who can resist West Coast delicacies, home baked confectionery and colourful preserves? The shop brims with nostalgic items like enamelware and old porcelain. A coat rack with hats.....postcards..... a feast for the eyes!

Folks and fish #4

2010-06-23T11:31:00.008+02:00

In the last of this 4-part series, I stopped some anglers who were on their way to a high rocky outcrop. While I asked questions of one guy, his friends cast some lines into the rushing surf, prior to climbing to their favourite rock. How lonely it must be sitting there on the cold rocks! One needs such patience! Somewhere I read that God would not detract from a person's years on earth the time he spent fishing!

The main aim of these men were to catch fish for the pot. I wish I can visit one of these homes to see the wonderful local recipes being created in the West Coast kitchens. The fish found here, close to Kabeljoubank are Cape Salmon (Geelbek), Yellowtail (Geelstert), Kabeljou (Cob) and the evasive and protected National fish of South Africa, called Galjoen. "What if there are no bites?" we asked. The old man laughed: " Then we must buy some Snoek!" he said. Yup, that will surely be better than arriving home with no fish at all to the wife waiting and ready with onions and skillet!

What I enjoyed about this painting was the pattern of vertical lines! Vertical lines are a symbol of masculinity(like soldiers with swords, like trees in a forest) I had to paint these lines freehand and had one chance to do them, they are shaky and so they will remain. Today, I am also showing the complete set which now resides in a city far from here.

Folks and Fish #3

2010-06-21T18:30:00.010+02:00

Of course we have already learnt a lot about the bokkom industry on the West Coast. First I painted a little row of bokkoms being salted and hung out to dry. Then the second stage was shown where they were peeled and made ready to be eaten.(Remember my homemade bread, apricot preserve and slivers of salty bokkoms served with coffee?)

This painting, third in the set "Folks and Fish", shows the largest of the bokkom drying barns on the banks of the Berg River at Velddrif where thousands of little mullet fish can be seen any day of the week. The bokkoms take 8 days to dry, depending on the weather and air circulation Janine is the petite lady who has managed this factory with its large salt bins and many hanging lathes for more than 12 years. This quietly dignified lady had me spellbound as she pointed out the many aspects of this industry which provides both jobs and food for the local people.

It would be easy to export the dry snacks with their sweet fishy smell or even introduce them to Johannesburg and other South African cities. But of course, it is a born and bred local taste that takes a bit of getting used to. As Janine stands there with her old-fashioned set of scales, she probably sees the same customers day by day.

Folks and Fish # 2

2010-06-17T10:56:00.015+02:00

From my studio I can see Kabeljoubank where the snoek hang out to dry with Table Mountain in the distance. If the motorists racing past on the R27 will only spend 15 minutes to drive to this rocky outpost, they can observe a centuries old West Coast custom of drying salted fish in the open air and seabreeze.

My models are not the owners of the fish, but are helping to turn and guard them for a small daily fee. On my first visit two years ago they were timid in front of the camera and extremely shy of the easel and paints set-up. Now, for a small modelling fee, they hold out the snoek so I can observe the lovely pinks of the wet fish and the blue and turquoise colours when the sun reflects the oil in the fish. They remember me from before and even tell my what I forgot to take note of the previous visit.

The painting, I think, is my least favourite of the "Folks and Fish"set of four because of the bright sunlight and deep shadows. I much prefer the cloudy moods of the West Coast for my paintings. Readers can find more about snoek in two of my older posts: Snoek drying on the fence, and Smoorsnoek prepared in a country kitchen.

Folks and Fish # 1

2010-06-13T13:45:00.009+02:00

This is the first painting of a set of four works, of which I have shown the preparatory sketches in the previous post. Working at them I am conscious of the poverty of the area and the plight of those brave souls, the sustenance fishermen, who face the sea day by day.

My model shows two of the four crayfish he is allowed to catch for his daily quota during the crayfish season. It will be safer for the men to catch the monthly allowance in one single day, and not face the sea so often, but unfortunately such a system will be difficult to control. (Crayfish can become very scarce and must be protected.)

Crayfish holes are marked by experienced fishermen, who will put on diving suits and retrieve their quota. Older people and non-swimmers can catch theirs by netting from the quay that conveniently projects into the sea like it does at Yzerfontein. Everybody keeps a measure handy as undersized specimens must be returned to the sea immediately.

We usually buy crayfish in Velddrif when they are in season and available, so I decided to use the harbour at Velddrif as a background for the painting. Read more about crayfish on the West Coast in my post: Crayfish Coast.

Post # 100!! Art Blogging is Tops!

2010-06-08T18:05:00.026+02:00

This is my hundredth post. I have not completed a painting as I am working on a commission and the sketches took some planning. One of them will be finished for the next blog. They are all about the people of the West Coast and what they do. I think I will call the set: Folks and Fish

I love art blogging! Art blogging is Tops! In no other way would one be so committed to paint year in, year out and that without a sense of rushing. (One or two exhibitions a year make up for the rushing part!) My nicest surprises as a new art blogger were when I featured on other art or travel blogs.

South African Blog of 2009 winner PORTFOLIO gave me a short feature in November: Marie Theron-Documenting the Real West Coast in Paint and Words .
This was followed by another article on PORTFOLIO in December: 10 Questions for West Coast Artist Marie Theron .
Marie Theron-West Coast Artist appeared on Bokkom.
In the beginning of 2010 Katherine Tyrrell started 'The Art of The Landscape' and bloggers were challenged to analyse their own paintings. I liked the idea and wrote: The Wheatfield and Why it was Successful. Katherine, a top 5 blogger in the UK placed me in an article: Self-Critique Marie Theron.
What a lovely surprise it was when 'Art with Liz' made special mention of my work on the West Coast in her post Bergriver, Velddrif.
Friendly Liz visited me at home in April where we shared sherry and a fire and chatted up a storm. Afterwards she wrote: Velddrif in April. I featured in many of the comments from her friends too! Bloggers are so kind!
Paying my regular online visit to "Postcards from the Hammer", Catherine Jeffrey's blog, I was very thrilled to find my name in the post Yonge Street Patterns 2, Toronto, Ontario., where Catherine expressed appreciation for my critiques of her work.

My husband once teased me that bloggers give each other a warm feeling! Exactly!

Boats, Boulders and lots of Blue!

2010-06-04T18:43:00.009+02:00

Boats, boulders and lots of blue, it can only be a description of Paternoster. It is a mild day, almost too warm to be called winter. Having developed a love for Paternoster, it is easy for me to go the 100km to reach one of the prettiest fishing villages in South Africa.

The beach is a soft blonde colour! The rounded boulders are an un-threatening grey that throws purple shadows. And then, to contrast with nature, there are the washing-day-white cottages with their blue shutters. Do not forget the boats, mostly blue, lying everywhere or arriving suddenly from the big nowhere over the ocean, filled with fish. These scenes just wait to be photographed or painted.

Our voles are just too cute!

2010-05-31T15:33:00.010+02:00

Rodents are rodents? No, definitely not, I have promised to stand in the way of anybody trying to disturb the bush where my nearest little voles live. They live in dense thorny bushes where they make tunnels. These bushes are part of the original fynbos of the West Coast, and not something we planted here. Of course these clever animals think ahead and love multiple exits. Strangely enough the little Cape Robins seem to share these tunnels with them, as they are in and out, "visiting" or maybe "boarding" as there are no trees for birds on the coast. Something else I have noticed about these "buildings": like the ancients in Crete and Athens, the entrances of the abodes face East!

Voles are extremely shy and will not enter the house. I have the greatest problem taking photographs. They love sitting in front of their tunnels in the winter morning sun, but scatter if you as much as pass by a window inside. A vole is stouter in body than a mouse and also much larger. Voles have shorter tails and bigger ears. I am sure Beatrix Potter would have been enchanted to see them and would have made up little characters!

I needed depth for this painting and painted the background in watercolour over which I then glazed a layer of thinned down white acrylic. The vole and foreground was done in acrylics.

The African Black Oystercatcher

2010-05-24T19:39:00.012+02:00

I have painted a pair of "tobies" flying low above the water line where they forage for food. The long orange-red bills are also used to pry oysters and mussels from between the rocks and they can push that bill right into the sand to find little fauna underneath. These birds also feed by night! African Black Oystercatchers or Haematopus moquini, called tobies in our area, mate for life, the pair remaining loyal throughout their potentially long lives of up to 35 years.

Black oystercatchers are the most precious birds on the West Coast, being on the Red Data list of seriously endangered birds with less than 5000 in the world. There is a sign at Kabeljoubank warning visitors not to disturb these birds. (visitors to these beaches and rocks are luckily very few) Tobies are not very scared if you keep your distance, and I can sit quietly about 10 meters from them for a long time.

Their nesting habits are problematic as they scratch a shallow nest into sand and sometimes line it with a few bits of shell. With only one to four eggs lying in the open, the dangers are many! The eggs can be trampled, found by dogs or grabbed by other birds and animals. It is a known fact that the conservation people who watch and count the birds will not even tell a well-meaning person where a nest can be found! Human curiosity may just lead a person to try and take a peek and later on someone's dog may follow the spoor!

The Cape Cormorant

2010-05-19T18:17:00.006+02:00

We are very fond of these large black birds that are so poised and upright! I think they hold the moral high ground too, as they are not scavengers of domestic food like the seagulls. (There is one seagull visiting in the painting.) They are known for forming long lines over the sea, rising higher and lower as they search for shoals of pelagic fish like pilchards.

Phalacrocorax Capensis is its Latin name and it refers to the chrome yellow patch on the throat at the base of the bill. This patch is brighter in breeding season when these usually quiet birds get quite vociferous, shouting gheeee and ghaaaa, where they breed on the islands off the West Coast.

We once found a dead cormorant that was ringed. The phone number was that of the Pretoria Zoo who referred us to the University of Cape Town. We learnt that the bird was ringed at Dassen Island 6 months previously! Why we care, is that on the IUCN Red list of threatened species Cape Cormorants are listed as "near threatened", the greatest dangers being oil pollution and predators as well as disease.

This was one of those absolutely wonderfully warm autumn days. I went overboard taking photos but will just show the one where they stretch their wings to dry in the sun after fishing. My palette was ruled by white and black, Indian red and Prussian blue for the grays in the clouds, rocks and birds. I added cerulean blue to this limited palette to paint the sky.

After the Rain

2010-05-14T11:02:00.008+02:00

There is so much to see here at the seaside after heavy rains. I always go down to observe those enormous waves, heavy with water after the previous day's deluge. This little guy is sitting here like a statue. Shall we try to guess his thoughts?

Maybe he is thinking of NATURE, the immense power of the storming waves. He can watch the seagulls diving down for all the "fast food" like "storm-crushed mussels". He can watch that brown mass in the water which is kelp that has been uprooted and will soon be thrown out on the pebbles to rot. He can count the waves and wait for every 7th one, which is always the big one!

He can also consider HISTORY! This exact spot claimed The British Peer in 1896. (Wikepedia made one mistake. It was not at Saldanha but at Kabeljoubank where it wrecked!) The ship's ballast consisted of small red and yellow Victorian facebricks. Nowadays, when somebody collects pebbles and shells they will find the completely rounded "brick pebbles" as a reminder of that large wreck. The boy may also think sad thoughts of family tragedy. I once met an older couple sitting here, who said that their son had an accident in a little boat here. This, unfortunately is something that can take place on the West Coast!

But, knowing boys, I think it is GEOGRAPHY on his mind, of leaving one day for places far away. Ask a local person what you will find over the water and they answer "England". The English arrived along these shores when they attacked the country in the beginning and again at the end of the nineteenth century, so maybe that planted the idea. (But if our boy travels as the crow flies he will reach not Britain, but Uruguay!)

After the rock painting, I remained in the mood for subjects of limited colour, so I will search for one of our local "wildlife", a Cape franklin, vole, mongoose or tortoise to paint next. The colours waiting on my palette are black, white, yellow ocre, Indian red and the one I can never do without: Prussian Blue.

Rock Solid!

2010-05-10T08:50:00.012+02:00

I will not describe our Cape introduction-to-winter weather! Suffice to say it is known as The Cape of Storms/Cabo des Tormentos! I do not venture far out on the West Coast and rather paint the scenes that are close by. This very square old rock thrones over many low rows of jagged serrated points. I see it every time I can get my lazybones out of bed to take a beach walk.

After doing the painting, I found among my photos of the last five years many different images. There it stands, darkish, split into three layers so very long ago! The side that is always facing the sun looks as if it has been bleached a lighter colour. Over the top and down the sides, like icing, runs the white lines of calcified guano left by the visiting local seagulls and black cormorants.

The scene changes. Birds come and go, the tide ebbs and flows, the mists come down and lift again, but it sits there proudly, patiently! I think I will name this painting: "Rock Solid".

More about Paternoster

2010-05-02T19:00:00.008+02:00

West Coast autumn days have many faces, but a lovely clear almost-winter day is like a tonic for the soul. It is 12 noon and on the beach at Paternoster everything is peaceful. Clear turquoise water, a gentle low tide, boats resting and parents probably having a cooling drink on one of the verandas!

Aren't you painting too many boats, the family wants to know....but I still have a story to tell about the small fishermen, the subsistence guys who are really at the bottom of the hierarchy as far as fishing rights are concerned. During the last century, people were free to fish, but things do change for many reasons. Fish become scarce. Crayfish is no longer poor people's food but an important export product. A fisherman is allowed to bring in 4 crayfish per day, and a small amount of fish,which means to live he has to go out daily and face the dangers of the ocean.

Large factories can buy bigger concessions than the small guys, and they have to. They must pay salaries to thousands of factory workers. And also, the population now need many tons of frozen fish, tinned fish, sardines, crayfish and cat food which a large company with large trawlers and refrigeration is able to deliver.

It is sad to listen to the very real fears of some of the 30,000 local subsistence fishermen. They can go to work in factories and the steelworks , but that means travelling to Saldanha, and have a divided family with old values under pressure. Children also loose respect for parents not able to provide for them and get involved in bad habits. West coast tourism, luckily, is growing and will hopefully provide jobs as people discover the joys of this peaceful area. How nice it is to be in a place that is not rich, not opulent, but so very tranquil and naturally beautiful!

After many months, I have to add this bit of news: This is the top painting on my blog! I watch the polls, and the paintings move up and down, but "More about Paternoster" stays in the first place!

Crayfish Coast

2010-04-24T17:50:00.007+02:00

All along the West Coast you can enter the water and find crayfish! But of course it is appreciated and eaten with reverence. Treat the abundance of the sea with disrespect and one day there will remain nothing! So it is essential to have a licence which allows you a limited quantity. Undersized crayfish are always returned to the sea to breed another day.

One of my first visits ever to Paternoster, we had hardly parked or someone offered us crayfish for sale and asked us to open the car boot fast! These are such nice and amusing people, but their wares, you must ignore. Of course the local people had taken from the sea for generations and see rules as something to get around. There are plenty of stories of locals putting out sentries to warn them of the approach of "Fauna and Flora" which is the name for the Marine and Coastal inspectors.

Here is a favourite story, often told: A vendor walks with a bucket of undersized crayfish when an inspector appears suddenly.

"You are selling small ones there!"

"No, sir, " comes the answer, "I am teaching them to swim...I will show you!" He walks to the water and let the crayfish down one by one and they swim away.

"I still do not believe you" says the inspector, "I am fining you for possession of illegal crayfish".

Fast as a flash comes the answer: "Which crayfish?"

The crayfish on our plates are enormous and taken out by a kindly young neighbour (with licence, of course)! Sometimes we buy them at Velddrif or Paternoster and all the restaurants also offer crayfish. The painting gave me great pleasure as I longed for colour after I have been doing a lot of blue skies lately.

White on white in Paternoster

2010-04-20T16:07:00.003+02:00

Today, I show the new developments in Paternoster. There had been unfortunate design happenings along the West Coast, as in Yzerfontein and Langebaan where far too many different architectural styles vie with each other for attention. Here in beautiful Paternoster every new building shows it's respect to the Cape vernacular style.

Look at those vertical windows, the dark gray corrugated iron roofs, the railway sleeper lintels over wooden window frames and the one and only colour adopted from past dwellings: white! And as a feature: the large white chimneys, practical and pretty!

Paternoster is still very much a fishing village and one can see a hundred boats drying out on the wide white beach at any specific moment, but it has also become the place where tourists can relax in luxury in unique boutique hotels and cooling restaurants. Have a peek at Paternoster here!

Paint wise, yes, I am back where I was before with my finer brush. To me, the choice of which detail to skip over was too hurtful, so here we have the full illustrated image!

You must love Paternoster!

2010-04-15T13:16:00.007+02:00

I held out for a while, but now I must introduce you to the best loved and most beautiful West Coast town, Paternoster. It still retains that true fishing village feeling. I previously joined the voices which complained that the town was now "over-developed"(about two-hundred houses). That is until you behold the southern coast of Spain! Here on the golden beaches, you truly relax. The ever-present fishing boats are rustic and colourful! The few new restaurants offer splendid views and welcome refreshments. All the homes in this spotless village are built in the true West Coast vernacular and mostly painted white.

How did the name Paternoster come about? Each expert has his own theory. Was it because the indigenous people wore beads that reminded one of a rosary, or did some boats land in trouble on this very rough coast and quickly realized the value of praying the "Our Father" which is what the word means?

A more painterly painting this time! I refrained from using my number 4 round brushes....mmmm...I think last week's very fine illustration had something to do with it. I grabbed an angled shader and used the sides, edge and point and did a lot of double loading with 2 colours. The photo underneath shows a boat coming in, and granddaughter Robyn in pink, joining the curious crowd!

The Berg River Estuary at Velddrif

2010-04-11T18:26:00.010+02:00

Does this wading stilt know what is real and what is an illusion as he hunts for small frogs, insect larvae, molluscs and shellfish? The river flows restlessly behind his island, but there is hardly a ripple in the soft blue mirror in front. Around him, inter-tidal mudflats and salt marshes, some parts murky and others shining like metal!

"Stilt" is surely the best name for Himantopus himantopus, or as he is called in Afrikaans: "Rooipoot-elsie". Using his long stilt-like legs he can wade in different depths of water up to his so-called knees and never needs to swim. In flight these long legs extend well beyond the tail.

There is a wonderful atmospheric bird hide on the Berg River estuary at Velddrif and more than 200 species can be viewed here. Besides the black-winged stilts there are amazing spoonbills, pelicans, flamingos, moorhens, Caspian terns and kingfisher. I always visit places on midday, thus I only saw flamingos in the distance resting under the bridge. A week later Liz photographed swarms of them at sunrise, so visit her blog to see more of our lovely river!

Something I love but do not understand is how migrating birds, dolphins, swimming birds, etc can do synchronized movements. Music in their heads, maybe? In my photo two egrets, "Tweedledum and Tweedledee" I shall call them, feed close to the bird hide, totally synchronised!

Bokkoms: Turning from Silver to Gold

2010-04-06T18:39:00.008+02:00

As the little fish dry out they become thin, papery and have a rich golden hue. In my painting I show some people deftly gutting and skinning the fish. It is good to watch them for a while as you can then have a few bokkoms weighed out and clean them yourself at home. The meaty part is then cut into tiny strips. About these workers: no assembly line here as each worker makes him/herself comfortable on an upturned crate and sit either in the shade or in the sun.

Later I strolled up and down the Berg River looking at every bird, boat, bend and island in the river, and still the lady in the yellowish t-shirt concentrated on her task, never moving, maybe because the knife was very sharp. "Her back!" I thought, and tried to paint the tension in those back muscles.

So how do we eat this delicacy? No doubt, the great cooks will invent some interesting pates for us, but here on the West Coast bokkoms are either eaten as a salty snack with ice cold beer or wine, or the other way, the high calorie way, which is how I and most people prefer it: Take home-baked oven-warm white bread, plaster it with real butter, add a good dollop of sweet apricot preserve and arrange the bokkoms on top. Pour a cup of the best coffee with it. Now I know how I am going to celebrate the completion of this week's post!

Bokkoms at Velddrif (and blog's first anniversary)

2010-03-31T10:33:00.012+02:00

The schools of fish near Velddrif have attracted people for ages! Some fish traps and shell middens dating back hundreds of years, having belonged to Khoi-Khoin (early indigenous inhabitants) are protected historical beacons. The quaint little lane next to the Berg River which is aptly named "Bokkom Lane" is considered an informal "national monument". Here, in a never-changing cycle, schools of harders are offloaded from rickety boats onto rickety jetties. First, the fish is thrown into deep salt troughs, then, still wet and glistening they are bunched and hung out to dry. The moment they are salted and stringed onto rafters they are no longer referred to as harders or mullet, but become bokkoms.

In my painting, and in the photographs you can see the first steps in the process. Bokkoms are hung out to dry. They are very beautiful and this subject is a favourite among West Coast artists. My next post I will show them dried to a golden colour. I will then explain the second part of the process and explain how to eat this local delicacy.

I mentioned in the title that this is my blog's first anniversary. When I took those bold steps, I did not know that I would make many friends, sell lots of paintings and really get hooked on blogging! I did not add my flag counter before June last year, but what fun it provides! So now I know that I had 8664 hits and 71 countries visited my blog so far and that my highest number of visitors in a day was 122. (Sport and celebrity blogs cannot compete here, please!) And in true Oscar style I want to thank my 1747 unique South African visitors, 792 very kind Americans, 99 Australians (who ARE you, I want to meet you too???), an equal number of UK people and 77 Canadians. The biggest surprise was the interest in my blog that was shown by travel websites.

Saldanha Bay - Early Morning Rhapsody in Blue

2010-03-24T16:36:00.007+02:00

A nick-name for the West Coast is "the cannery coast", for here bedazzling amounts of fish are harvested from hundreds of fishing vessels. The great reserves of plankton-rich water attracts shellfish, harders and maasbankers, the so-called pelagic fish. Soon after the Dutch created their outpost for supplies in the Cape, the large number of seals and seagulls were a sure sign that fish were plentiful here. In later centuries a little coastal road developed which is today the well-known R27. Even today the local economy depends much on fishing the waters around Saldanha and its six islands.

I caught these two boats "dozing" in the bright morning mist in the harbour of Saldanha. The blue colours on many of these vessels are extremely attractive. I noticed in a private part of the harbour that the massive I&J fishing fleet has a uniform royal blue for their boats, but cannot tell for sure why so many others are painted blue. I only know that I hope to paint many more of them!

To paint the ripples on the water I under painted in white, covered with sea-green and then "lifted" the white bits. My art friends will also notice that I have once again defied the rules of composition! In the previous post all the people walk OUT of the picture and here I balance the heavy mass of two boats with nothing but the bright water and a strong thin border of distant land.