1st - 5th May 2024
2024 Visual Artists
We are honoured to present this beautifully diverse collection of artists at our 2024 festival!
Find your favourite at the Visual Arts Exhibition, on the village square.
Entrance is FREE and all are welcome!
Omolemo Rammile
Free State
Omolemo Rammile, currently completing an Advanced Diploma in Studio Art, majoring in painting at the Central University of Technology was named runner-up at the Sasol New Signatures Competition 2022. The Sasol New Signatures competition has been a platform for promoting emerging artists and their work to the public with many of the pieces placed in the Sasol art collection.
Estelle Dry-Muller
Gauteng
Estelle Dry-Muller is a qualified Fine Artist. She lectures part time at the Vega Design School, teaching Postmodern Theory, Drawing for Game Design, Design Culture and Visual Literacy.
She has taken part and curated several exhibitions and has been a finalist in both the Sasol New Signatures, Absa'L Atelier Art and Thami Mnyele Fine Art competitions.
Kylie Buys
KZN
Kylie is a self-taught artist specialising in wildlife and botanical art pieces as well as pet portraits.
She enjoys all art mediums and has explored working with watercolours, pastels, oils, acrylic paint, graphite pencils and colour pencils.
Tanja Davey
KZN
Born and raised in Pongola, Kwa-Zulu Natal, Tanja Havenga Davey is a very reputable South African artist with a unique talent and vision.
Tanja's favourite medium to work with is mixed media, although all her current work is predominantly in acrylic.
Lucinda Lens
KZN
Lucinda is a self-taught artist who started a wallpaper company – Wallcandy – with her husband. The idea was to showcase the amazing world of images that could transform one's sanctuary into a place of happiness and colour. After nearly 15 years of playing with wall murals, wallpaper and art she decided to focus more on the art side of things; pushing the boundaries of creativity and learning new techniques to uplift her art to a different view of that of the norm.
Paul Murray
Clarens
Paul grew up in Pietermaritzburg and began "copy" drawing old-fashioned pattern sketches in 1984.
"I would describe my art as an extension of me. I commit to my drawing, pushing my limits to create a work that is not a photo-realist attempt, but more a reflection of how I feel about an image or a mood that I see in a photograph, and then hiding tricky little images inside the piece. I just enjoy creating beautiful images."
Jodie Loubser
Western Cape
Situated in Cape Town, Jodie explores her country regularly and developed a passionate love for the South African landscape. She mostly draws inspiration from European Victorian Interiors, architecture and the art of the old masters like Monet, Adolph Menzel, Gustave Caillebotte and Degas.
Alison Smith
KZN
Alison has had no formal art training but is familiar with most mediums with a preference for bold Acrylics on Canvas. A longtime Fly Fisherman based in Hilton, she has a huge passion for the outdoors and traveling around the country gaining experience at workshops with well-known artists. She has been working on a series of bright African Mixed media paintings and has quite a following with her interesting Coffee & Ink Landscapes.
Jason Johnstone
KZN
Jason is a photographic artist based in the Kwa-Zulu Natal midlands and, whenever possible, game reserves around Southern Africa. His favourite subject is nature, with a particular focus on birds, and he loves the interpretive quality that black and white photography brings to this subject. Jason's goal when creating an image is to capture something we can relate to emotionally, rather than to document the subject - an emotion, an experience, or an archetype. To this end, he enjoys experimenting with combining images to create an atmospheric and expressive piece of art.
Ryan Loubser
Western Cape
Ryan Loubser has created his own signature ‘cubistic’ style called Fractionism after the influence of Picasso. He loves to travel and explore SA and it is during his travels that he collects the imagery that is later translated onto canvas. A strong observation of light and colour is central to his chosen composition, while his distinct style evokes with the viewer a sense of familiarity and nostalgia.
Solomon Mugutso
Gauteng
Solomon Mugutso (born in Zimbabwe) lives and works in Johannesburg. Mugutso is an artist whose work
focuses on the lives of people captured in the aesthetic that put the world and human life adrift.
Encapsulating hope, Mugutso’s work mirrors the words of poet, Emily Dickinson, “hope is the thing
with feathers that perches in the soul”, there to sing a tune without words. Thus on the “wings of
hope” the recurring motif of the red box with a window that he calls the window of hope speaks to a
more complex narrative of hope. Where the gap between coping and wishing is bridged by a belief
system we call faith. Through faith (whether secular or religious), the impossible is made to seem
possible, and the meaningless meaningful. (Eliott, 2022)
Emma Jane Halford
Gauteng
Born in Cambridge England in 1971, Halford’s love for art started at school and led to her studies in textile design. Most of her working career was spent in the fashion and decor industry, where her understanding of the body in space was concretized. She has explored different mediums including painting and illustration, but has fallen in love with clay sculpting, which she uses as a channel for emotional expression.
.jpg)
Debbie Marx
Clarens
Debbie Marx is a part time still life artist living in the village of Clarens, Free State.
Her main reason for painting is to create beautiful paintings to enhance both her home and yours.
Debbie believes in being true to who you are and what you love. Some of her favourite subject materials are flowers, chinaware, glass and fresh produce.
She is generally a neat tidy painter, focussing on a systematic process and then spending time on fine tuning the realistic finished product. She works in oils on canvas. Her pallet is generally muted, creating soft gentle paintings. Debbie has a home studio where she loves to spends her days. She still takes classes and loves to paint with her art friends.
Debbie exhibits her works at Brushstrokes Gallery in Clarens.
Rose-Marie Schutz
Clarens
Hailing from a small German Community in North West, Rose-Marie found another ‘Heimat’ in Clarens. She flourishes in this tranquil, rural village which is synonamous with her personality and life style.
Having studied under different mentors, their influence is interwoven in her way of making art.
She finds it stimulating to paint with an enthusiastic group of artists, sharing their knowledge and experience in many a happy session!
Her work is inspired by a range of different subjects, from landscapes and still lives to portraits and figures: whatever happens to inspire her at any given time.
Often whimsical and melancholic, a yearning for the past is ever present in the realistic rendering of her subjects.
%20(1).jpg)
Eugene van Vrede
Gauteng
Eugene Van Vrede lives and works in Johannesburg.
With no formal art training, he is mostly self-taught by trial and error and a lot of YouTube.
Eugene is an avid horseman and his passion with horses soon became his inspiration for his artworks along with his love for wildlife and farm animals.
Although oils have always been his medium of choice, he does enjoy the more playful side of combining other mediums.
Focusing on gestural strokes and a strong play on light to really portray the elegance and fluid movements of his chosen subjects.
Gill Dobson
KZN
I was born and grew up in what was then Rhodesia and had a love of art from my pre-school years. My childhood also gave me a great love for the bush and the incredible array of birds, animals and wonderful landscapes that are a part of southern Africa. As an adult I have travelled widely around South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, and Zambia and draw most of my inspiration from my experiences.
I like to use a wide variety of media such as watercolours, acrylics and oils to keep things interesting. Recently I have begun to experiment a lot more with mixing media and also including charcoal and lino cutting as part of my creative processes.
I have exhibited frequently at Art in the Park, Hilton Arts Festival, Art and Soul Gallery, Arusha Designs and this year am honoured to have been chosen as a finalist for the Africa Wildlife Artist of the Year 2024.
.jpg)
.jpeg)
Hilary Grant-Currie
KZN
Hilary Grant -Currie graduated with a BA Fine Arts degree and a teachers diploma from the University of Pretoria. And has been involved with art is one way or another since then. She has the privilege of living in rural Zululand with its wealth of natural beauty. Taking inspiration from her environment, she paints the beautiful landscapes, with big skies, rocks, trees, fauna and flora, the things she loves. As a passionate conservationist, birder, photographer, and hiker, much of her free time is spent outdoors. She enjoys experimenting with acrylic, charcoals, and inks as part of her creative journey, but works mostly in oils on canvas.
Llewellyn Evans
KZN
Llewellyn Evans has had a life-long passion for art and oil painting in particular. He enjoys the richness and depth of colour that oil paint imparts - almost a sensual blend of smell, feel and vision. He prefers doing landscapes, where he can use the earthy richness of the oil paint to show the colours and textures of mountains, rock faces and old farm buildings.
He has done a fair amount of wildlife paintings as well, with elephants being his subjects of choice in that field.
He lives and works in Kloof where he has been part of the community since 1976.
.jpeg)
Natania Botha
Gauteng
Natania believes in the power of art to amplify the message of sustainability.
Each piece she creates is a mosaic of intention, representing not only the beauty of the natural world but also the urgency to protect it, infusing creativity with a deep-rooted passion for environmental advocacy.
Join her on this artistic journey, where her soul’s connection to antiquity meets a modern commitment to sustainability.
Neil Moss
Clarens
Neil studied Criminal Justice at UNISA and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He turned his art into his profession about 25 years ago.
He has his own gallery and studio in Brooklyn Pretoria from where he teaches art.
He is self taught and his enthusiasm and vibrant energy is reflected in his art.
He also has a studio in Clarens from where he teaches art.
.jpeg)
_JPG.jpg)
Shannon Quarmby (The Flora Collection)
KZN
My name is Shannon Quarmby, but I go by Flora. I am a multi-disciplinary artist based in Empangeni, Kwazulu Natal.
My main focus is watercolour and oil, but I am proficient in many other areas. You will find animal portraits, flora, landscapes and architecture in my artworks.
I have always loved the feeling I get from creating, and the emotions that come along with it. I started The Flora Collection so that I can share that feeling with many other people, for a long time to come.
Sinalo Ntuli
Gauteng
Sinalo Ntuli has been hailed as an artist with a unique extraordinary rendering of painting that has infused a dynamic dimension of techniques through the articulate and spellbinding usage of beads, which has endowed the content of his statement of intent with value.
In his exploration of the painting medium, he has interwoven content into the authentic Afrocentric path that spells adherence to our South African values.
_PNG.png)
Vanessa Mayhew
KZN
Vanessa is the leading expert in all things abstract & fluid art related. Based in KZN, South Africa, she has regularly exhibited and sold her art throughout the country and internationally. With over 20 years of experience in teaching within the art space, she is a natural facilitator for both in-person and online fluid art workshops.
Visual Vibes Gallery (Veronica Stafford)
Clarens
I use mixed media to create contemplative art born out of raw inspiration. Through figurative art, I express what words cannot.
The art is undefined, borderless, and free.
I'm inspired by emotions and how we express them through the movement of our bodies.
Freedom of expression is the highest value for me, and capturing that in my art is my purpose.
.jpeg)
Wisdom Chitembetembe
Gauteng
I was given the gift of life in the year 1996, in the grass lands of Zimbabwe but currently residing in south Africa in the city of Johannesburg . I am a self-taught visual Artist. I mostly love to express myself through art, using art as my voice to depict the everyday life of the people within my community and other places that surrounds me. My main drive or the message behind my work is to educate, inspire, motivate, encourage and uplift the discouraged as I share with the world the life experiences of myself and that of the other people that leave within my sphere of influence.
Zulu Lulu Arthouse
KZN
Zulu Lulu Arthouse is in the heart of the KZN Natal Midlands based at Piggly Wiggly. We are passionate about creating a beautifully curated gallery to showcase local Artist work; supporting and growing the love and appreciation of the Art in our area. We will be bringing artwork to Clarens from a variety of Artsist, from Peter Botha, Jane Digby, Michelle Offerman, Cheryl Walker, Linda Lemon, Denise Beuke, Neville Pickford, Nicole Pletts and Penny Meakin
We are excited about sharing their work with you at the festival and representing these brilliant artists.
