Hoedspruit artists to showcase their pieces in Cape Town exhibition

Two local artists will be showcasing their artwork at the ‘Beyond Knowing Nature’ joint exhibition at The Cape Gallery on the September 2.

Sophie Niemann and Anne Watt both have to get together 15 pieces of artwork for the exhibition which will be opened by the locally famous actor, Johann Nel.

The Cape Gallery is noted as one of the top 10 galleries in Cape Town on Church street, it is the oldest gallery if its kind in Cape Town.

The work will be up in the cape gallery for the month with another event on the ‘first Thursday’ when all the galleries open late and is apparently quite an popular evening.

Here’s a little more about Anne and her work:

Anne studied Art in Glasgow and has been painting seriously for over twenty-five years. She has has exhibitions in Scotland, Papua New Guinea, Australia and South Africa.

Her work is highly influenced by the impressionists and uses a lot of imagination in her pieces. She says that colour is of huge importance to her and “the brighter, the better”. She believed movement is essential and says, “The African people have a way of showing this to me.”

Read: A different sort of art…

One of her favourite artists is Ephraim Ngatane as she believes he invites the viewer into his scenes and shows the characters.

Anne currently lives in Raptors view, Hoedspruit with her husband, Stan and says she is faced with colour and light each day, “This inspires my paintings, the rural settings and colourful clothes weave their way into my work. The people ease into the scenes. I have lived in Scotland, Australia, Papau New Guinea and South Africa. The colours changed with each country, but now that Africa is in my soul, my work is set.”

Sophie Niemann is a textile and mixed media artist, here is a little more about her work:

Sophie’s work is not quite as it seems at first glance. What may look like an oil painting is actually a multi-textural piece of art which incorporates African textiles and a
technique known as ‘Thread painting’, making subjects of her work come to life with a unique texture, tactile appeal and depth.

Sophie is a self-taught artist and says, “I am just putting my toe into the art world having my work being displayed in Hoedspruit at Warren Cary wildlife Gallery and Inyoka gallery since last year and Imbizo gallery in KZN. This is my first formal exhibition and have only being producing art work for the last three years.”

Sophie is hugely inspired by wildlife and during her time in Africa as a Zoologist, she has had the privilege to spend most of her days in nature working for a conservation and community organisation, setting up programmes across Africa.

Read: From Tzaneen to Austria, and back again

She uses her experiences with wildlife and nature as an inspiration and hopes to express the beauty and wonder of nature in her work, using her work to educate her audience on wildlife conservation and the various plights and issues facing many of our vanishing species.

Sophie says she was inspired to use fabric in her work as she was surrounded by it as a child, “Literally as my mother made fabric models, I divided my time between enjoying nature or spending time in my mother’s ‘Aladdin’s cave of a sewing room’, rummaging about and creating things from all the off cuts of fabric. Through my teens and adulthood I always had a sewing machine for mending and the odd creation,” she says.

“After discovering the technique of ‘Threadpainting’, basically ‘painting’ with thread on a sewing machine, there was no stopping me and love the texture it brings to my work and the challenges it brings to be to create the finished piece.”

Sophie says she has a scrapbook of ideas, colour combinations, sketches or images that ‘strike a nerve’ with her. Once she finds a particular image or subject that “gets under her skin”, she knows this is the one she must focus on next.

She says, “I enjoy painting the whole picture in oils, despite most of it being covered with canvas later. It gives me more insight on where the shading, light and texture is, before I add the fabric over it.”