Like clay in her hands

Although Breedt was never formally trained, and never worked professionally as an artist, she has spent her life experimenting in one artistic medium after another – beginning with music, as she and her twin sister made their name singing in nightclubs and at weddings.

“We used to harmonise like the Andrews sisters,” she said.

Breedt’s talent does not stop at the performing arts, however. She is a published poet, awarded an International Poet of Merit Award by the International Society of Poets in 2002, and is an avid sketch artist specialising in the human form. Her most recent, prolific work, meanwhile, fills her home’s cabinets and shelves in an array of original ceramic figurines.

Ranging from the comically cartoonish to the risque and occasionally the grotesque, Breedt’s sculptures represent an ingenious imagination as well as a high level of technical skill, which she says was entirely self-taught. According to Breedt, she first started working with clay after moving to Natal with her then husband. At the time, her son was working as a potter, and his studio provided the space and equipment Breedt needed to experiment. Breedt dug her own clay to fashion the items her fertile imagination suggested, after which her son fired and glazed her work.

“Once I start making them I get enthusiastic… I don’t plan what I’m going to make,” she explained.

Breedt sold several pieces in a hobby shop, and gave some away, but never took her interest further. Now, having moved to Johannesburg, she lacks the space or equipment to continue her sculpting, and has made only one series, depicting Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela, using photographs in the newspaper for inspiration.

Despite the limitations placed on her sculpture, however, Breedt’s energy is unstoppable, and she continues to keep herself fully occupied, working as a caretaker for her complex, taking care of her dogs, and pouring her creative energy into a small, but luxuriant, garden.

“I’ve got my hands full,” she said.