painters-from-south-africa

"In Jeannette's work, the degree of abstraction varies. While in the abstract works just discussed the powerful effect of the self-created colours dominates and a very sensual, atmospheric impression is created, the objects in the "Highgear" series with the conveyor frames are clearly recognizable to the viewer. We can clearly see winding towers, machines, wheel bucket excavators, cranes... But even in these works there are undefined areas."

"On her travels, Jeannette Unite collects ore-containing sand from the dumps, as well as dust, overburden and metal oxides. She uses them as a painting medium on her picture carriers, which makes her art something very special. The artworks thus contain waste products from industrial mining that develop amazing colors and patterns when they react chemically, for example, or are melted in the artist's kiln at extreme temperatures (her studio is half chemistry lab, half office, half apartment)."

"Jeannette Unite also works directly with the products of mining. She, however, signals the artist’s complicity in the industry. Creating her own pastels using pigments ground from leftover minerals and mine tailings she continues the tradition of landscape representation, but knowingly constructs her images from the constituents of land itself."

"She has a deep reverence for all these substances and also a deep knowledge of their origin, their age, their occurrences. For them, it is important that we humans as end consumers and consumers develop a deeper awareness of the fact that practically everything we use every day comes from the minerals and materials we find on and in the earth. We ourselves consist of it! Unite is passionate about mixing, batching, firing, melting and reacting its substances. This passion and energy is clearly noticeable in her work. She works largely in the open air at home, so that the wind and other factors also leave room for chance."

"Mining has been central to her practice since an introduction to alluvial diamond prospecting pits on the Palaeolithic African West Coast beach resulted in her first body of work Earthscars (2004). The exhibition engaged the damage done directly to the earth by excavation, and aligned her concerns with an eco‐ feminist consciousness of earth as body."

"Due to her artistically unconventional approach, she is often compared to an alchemist. In the creation and production of its works of art, Unite benefits significantly from her strong physical, chemical, geological and historical knowledge."

"Unite is one of the world's most respected artists when it comes to mining. Due to her artistically unconventional approach, she is often compared to an alchemist. In the creation and production of its works of art, Unite benefits significantly from its strong physical, chemical, geological and historical knowledge."

"Searching, I roamed the world—to arrive at the origin—at beauty—at truth—away from the lies of everyday—and my longing was burning hot—then the darkness opened up and I stood at the source of the Beginning—Paradise."

"Verification of the art must still be done, but from a layman's view it appears to be the same pieces that were taken in Pretoria."

"Her heavily-laden brush deposits swathes of colour and a tracery of mark that evokes at times the sweep and syncopation of Islamic calligraphy. The calligraphy that she encountered in the carved cartouches of the lintels of Zanzibari doors and the Islamic manuscripts which she collected, armed and liberated her mark-making. The boldness of her impasto brushwork results in a tangible embodiment of her sitters and their contexts, such that her decision to frame the works using fragments of Zanzibari doors feels completely in keeping."

"Irma Stern travelled frequently between South Africa and Germany as a child and this pattern continued into her adult life. During the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, she exhibited throughout Europe and was both known and respected there than in South Africa, where the reception of her work was overwhelmingly negative."

"Strelitzias and bones are ubiquitously the stuff of still life at high schools and tertiary institutions. Themes of flight, transcendence and masks as well as painting's relationship to music have also been well explored in these contexts. All of the above feature prominently in Jeanette Unite's show entitled 'Sentences', and it is for this reason that I found myself suffering from a sense of deja-vu. Somehow though, I felt reluctant to dislike the exhibition. Perhaps it is the energy which clearly suffuses the show or perhaps the sincerity of Unite's quotes which appear throughout the well-produced catalogue. She may, I guess, believe herself but I'm a little less sure."

"I'm not sure I really bought it, but the clearness of the artist's intention and her apparent sincerity cannot be ignored. In the catalogue and abridged essay which appears with the list of works, I found Unite's claims grandiose and her jumps from one subject to another a little unbelievable and unresolved. I also battle to discern the relationship between pretty abstract paintings and a peppering of very specific themes. Nevertheless, as a visually consistent body of work and a thorough exploration of various media I find it interesting."

"“I have a friend who struggles financially, and I love the way it’s reflected in her tubes with every last drop squeezed out of them. Other tubes have remnants such as hairs trapped in paint that has oozed out of the tube and dried, or the smudged paint fingerprints where they have been squeezed.”"

"“I build layer upon layer and before I know it, it is 10 kg.”"

"“I have always had an interest in where things come from and where they’re going and in my works I focus on the intrinsic connection that paint has with land.”"

"“Often I find that artists have an attachment to their old paint tubes, Marlene Dumas for example kept her tubes since she was a student.”"

"“I see my work as breaking down something unusable in order to build it up in the form of an artwork which ideally will be kept indefinitely.”"

"“My goal is to always look intensely at the impact of what I do in my life, where something I use comes from, what it really is, and where it’s going.”"

"To ensure that her work has a minimal impact on the environment Carolyn’s work involves the collection and reclamation of spent paint from painters – ranging from international artists to local contract painters. She removes the leftover paint from tins or cans and uses this paint to create her masterpieces such as Threshold and Transcodes featured in this Blog post. She even uses the hardened bits of nail varnish."

"I have just carried on doing what I did as a child. It’s been one long continuous stream of making pictures to feel a sense of connectedness. Painting this way is a wordless exclamation….Sometimes people get cross with it because they hate that it’s not about anything, and that I just carry on with all this realism. This fiddle-faddle, this knitting."

"Who cares if you can paint something that looks real? It is totally banal. There is no worth in that, except as a kind of sport, an exercise in hand-eye co-ordination. Now painting something that seems to contain reality – that is truly moving."

"There is relief in dwelling in a not-new picture, in embracing the foolishness of the formula, in discovering the beauty of each small detail that is woven into the picturesque whole. And while we are there, noticing the leaves, the clouds, the way the paint has described the folds of silk, perhaps something indescribable can be felt."

"I lived in many different places as I was growing up. This gave me an awareness of difference, the understanding that security cannot be found in the outside world."

"In life, as in pictures, there is only the Romantic. Behind the scenes of our lives, there is everything unspoken, unseen, unknown and nothing."

"Art is an offering, a show that mirrors the show we form around ourselves as we move through our scenery."

"Art is always artful, a ruse, a trick. It is a court fool, jumping up and down, aping its masters. Art is part of the dream that we inhabit."

"Poynton's paintings are more about the act of looking, of exposing the "trickery" behind traditional artistic practices, than they are windows onto a surreal world."

"By constructing spaces, placing slightly discordant objects amongst seemingly natural landscapes, Poynton creates a tension within her work that is intended to make the viewer uncomfortably aware of the act of perception."

"While most of her work can be categorized as realism, a few series depart from her usual aesthetic in a more abstract project. Her current exhibition, Scenes of a Romantic Nature, draws on her connection to Germany by referencing the landscape paintings of German artist Caspar David Friedrich."

"Her work often conflates tropes from traditional art history, from compositional techniques to poses of her subjects, and the indices of contemporary life to create a sense of chaotic inscrutability; in this way, Poynton creates work which is aesthetically engaging and intellectually confounding."

"Viewing Poynton's work is a personal experience. The story that comes to your mind is different from that of someone else. There is no right or wrong. All ideas and associations are welcome in the world of Deborah Poynton."

"Her work represents a mode of African modernist painting and sculpture, wherein she depicts her experience of having grown up and living in the South African countryside, and later her experiences as a black artist, living and working under an apartheid regime."

"Sebidi's portraits often depict abstracted African subjects in bright colours and a rich palette. She is often associated with the realist and quasi-expressionist schools, with her vivid paintings of life in both rural and urban South Africa and similarly striking clay sculptures."

"The old people told us stories...about how people live and...about how to see. They "read" the clouds. We used to sit outside in the courtyard, and especially in the very bright moonlight when there were a lot of clouds they used to read the stories for us and tell us: look at that, look at the soldiers, look at this! And they would tell us: you're going to have to see other life that's coming."

"Through her unique depiction of the human figure, we come to appreciate Sebidi’s representation of different forms of black being, and a search into the relationship between humanism, spiritualism and the contemporary black African condition."

"I had everything I needed, and I went to a good high school which was multiracial. Many families couldn't afford to send their kids there but I was fortunate that my mum was able to. I guess that also pushed me in a certain direction."

"There were no museums and galleries in the town I grew up in; that was foreign to me."

"...I can now marry the two worlds – fashion and fine art aren't far off from each other."

"The fabric used to produce uniforms for domestic workers is an instantly recognizable sight in domestic spaces in South Africa, and by applying it to Victorian dress she attempts to make a comment about history of servitude and colonization as it relates to the present in terms of domestic relationships."

"The female visual artists before my generation worked extra hard and paved the way for me. Some of them are being recognised only now; they died poor. For me it was easy; these women were the stepping stones."

"This was more about how I see the world and how I look at myself as a black woman born in apartheid South Africa in 1982."

"Sibande has used her work to expose many different things, from postcolonial South Africa to stereotypes of women as well as stereotypes regarding black women in South Africa."

"Her work contains multiple types of mediums such as sculpture, photography, design, collage, and even theatrics. Sibande's painting and sculpture uses the human form to explore the construction of identity in a postcolonial South African context, but also attempts to critique stereotypical depictions of women, particularly black women."

"Sibande's theatrical quotations of the language of dress and use of dramatic poses may be related to photographic representations of the Victorian female hysteric in various stages of a hysterical attack, in that they both evoke a sense of excess."

"Her body of work is divided into colour-based themes, and after her ‘blue period’, Mary moved to purple, with the highly acclaimed The Purple Shall Govern.""

"As a teenager, Sebidi became a domestic worker and estranged from her mother and step-father. Sebidi sewed and knitted and decided to pursue her art in her off-time with encouragement from the wife of her employer, who also pushed Sebidi towards formal training."

"I still delight in it when people find pleasure in my work. To paint is to reach out, hoping that one will touch. One wants to be understood."

"Her brushwork and color choice became more expressive and less consistent with her earlier works, using angular features and colored shapes to both her landscape paintings and portraits."

"She singled out Franz Marc of Der Blaue Reiter and Nolde, Schmidt-Rottluff and Pechstein of Die Brücke as significant to her personality, although she would claim not to have been influenced by them."