Visit the gallery in Brooklyn, Pretoria or in Kosmos Village Hartbeespoort Dam to view a wide selection of South African fine paintings and sculptures.
Brooklyn, Pretoria:Kosmos, Hartbeespoortdam:
127 Simon Bekker Street, Kosmos Village, Hartbeespoort Dam
+27 12 253 1606
The arrival of the youngest of six children, born to Nicholaas and Kitty de Wet on the farm “Erdzak” (Bag of Earth) in the old Transvaal town of Standerton, coincided to the day with the arrival of the British Royal family in South Africa in 1947 – hence the name Royalene.
After matriculating from Pretoria High School for Girls in 1964, she undertook a career in graphic design, which she followed until her marriage. Commencing in 1969, her early work was in brush and acrylic, covering a wide range of subject matter. Later her professional work developed, using palette-knife and oils, and her flowers took on a bold and distinctive style.
Royalene is known here and abroad for her palette-knife florals in oil. Examples of her work can be seen in galleries in some of the major cities in South Africa. Private collectors in America, Australia, New Zealand, France and England bear testimony of her expertise. She also had the priviledge of having one of her florals accepted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
In South Africa specifically, her work forms part of the private collections of amongst others, Sandy Ngema, the Chris Hani-family and the Spillhaus private homestead. The writer, Alec Natas’s fascination with her work, prompted the following response: ”It seems as if her emotions and her logical mind have come to terms, thus creating a tranquillity and harmony of colour, resulting in works of great poetic beauty.”
Corporate companies, amongst others BMW, have invested in her art for the embellishment of their offices.
Royalene exquisitely captures the very essence of floral beauty and splendour in incredible saturated colour. Her very large pieces portray the strength and vibrance of her unique and authentic style. The latter is a result of her accepting the advice of Lesley Giblett (a custodian of hand-lettering) who cautioned her ”never to take an art lesson in your life” because he said: ”Royalene, you have an individuality that you must retain at all costs.”
Source: http://royalene.co.za/
Tienie Pritchard was born in 1938 in the small town of Soekmekaar in the Northern Province. He attended Pietersburg Primary School and matriculated at Pietersburg Hoërskool. After school he started a career as public servant for the Department of Social Welfare, where he worked for 10 years. During all those early years, he spent every spare minute of his time with his first love – sketching and painting.
While being stationed at the remote little settlement of Karatara, he enro
lled for a correspondence course in commercial art. It was also during this phase that he discovered clay and very soon realized that he had a very specific preference and aptitude for sculpting. However, he needed guidance to be able to transfer his clay sculptures into a more durable medium. Therefore he applied for a transfer to Pretoria, where he enrolled at the Pretoria Art School at the Pretoria Technikon and attended night classes in sculpture under the tuition of Eugene Bouffa. The knowledge and skill he gained, as well as the ease with which he excelled in his performance at this art school, gave Tienie the confidence to resign his job and to become a full time sculptor.
Although the initial years of his sculpting career brought huge financial challenges, he persevered and within two years he got his first public commission – the Family Group entitled Life Cycle, which evoked enormous controversy and catapulted him on a successful career as professional sculptor of note.
After being a professional sculptor for 38 years, Tienie finds new challenges in his work continuously and his passion and dedication for his art is well known. He lives on a country estate near the Hartebeespoort Dam with his wife Elna and has four grown-up children – three sons and a daughter.
Source: Tienie Pritchard website
It is fascinating that an artist, who was living in a shelter in Johannesburg as little as 12 years ago, has become such an international success.
With no formal art training, this talented artist is creating a major stir amongst South African and International art collectors alike. Wakaba boasts sell out shows in New York and Philadelphia and has tr
avelled and exhibited extensively both locally and abroad.
It is often argued that Wakaba’s lack of formal art training has given his work an attractive roughness and integrity of its own. His works are uniform in their power, each having the gift of capturing a mood with such honesty, so as to literally stop the viewer in his tracks.
Wakaba is an extremely versatile artist and works in various mediums including oil, acrylic and interesting textures made from mixed media such as Hessian. His works can range from modern contemporary to ultra realism.
Since 2001 Wakaba has taken part in numerous exhibitions including various in the United States, the United Kingdom and all over South Africa. He has developed a strong following of loyal collectors and his work has developed from strength to strength.
His travels and unique experience with no formal training and little contact with other artists has infused Wakaba’s work with a character all of its own. Strength, unique use materials and mix media’s, colour combinations, sizes, shapes and subject matters.
He has completed a record cover for Gallo Records – Mbongeni Ngema’s Simuke Ndwendwe, various portraits of scenes from NNgema’s musical The Zulu.to Chris Tucker the African American actor, Liberty, Africa Bank, S’bu Ndebele The Premier of KZN, King Goodwil Zwellithin, Moreland, IFA (major shareholders in The Palm Resort in Dubai and owners of The Fairmont Hotel in Dubai), exhibited at The New York, Madiba Restaurant Brooklyn NYC. The S.A. Cardiff Trade Show, The Nedcor Building World Summit and in the delegates lounge at the Indaba Tourism Convention in the Durban International Convention Centre amongst numerous of the top South African home an décor shows.
Source: Wakaba Mutheki website
Working as a professional artist now for the past eight years, Munro has become one of South Africa’s best-selling artists. To understand Munro’s work, you have to be in touch with what is happening today in the world in general, especially relating to the introduction of the Internet. The information highway reinforced the already developing culture of instant gratification. Or should I say the steady increasing culture. Now to look at the Munro phenomenon: Somewhere, every day in SA, a few people are buying a Munro. Why? Because Munro has the ability to represent his times to the people. When you look at a Munro, you see what you get. Immediate gratification, presented to you in such a bold and honest way, that people seem to have the same immediate response to the work. Always breaking new barriers, this artist is not scared to enlarge his repertoire. Currently his abstract work is being received with due enthusiasm. In this work the Munro energy is even more visible and his message still comes through with the same power and energy as when he uses the single tulip as a theme. Munro has become a brand name and a leader in his field. You can see this by the influence he is having on some of his contemporaries. Today he is working on a farm, with relatively little contact with the public. He has chosen this lifestyle. Living his dream of solitude, he focuses on what is important in his life, his spiritual life, his art.
Michael was born in 1946 in Potchefstroom and obtained his Fine Arts degree in 1967 from the University of Pretoria. His creative ability and insight enabled him to capture moods and convey these visually. He came across Ikebana in a series, published on Japan, and was impressed by the simplicity and ‘silences’ evoked by this style. Music also began to play an important role in his life and has since remained part of his inspiration. The ‘musical themes’ of his abstract compositions, capture rhythm and sound waves. In 1967 during his final year Michael was awarded the SA Arts Association’s New Signatures award for his painting,Seetoneel. His first one man exhibition was held the following year. Michael’s distinctive paint application, sometimes wet layers on dry paint, pale colour on a dark background and subtle shades of colour have become distinguished features of his work. Accents of colour such as bright cycad pods, red poppies and indigo colours, have always been present. His work incorporates juxtaposition between the realistic and the symbolic. Michaels’s use of colour is expressive and evocative, stimulating awareness. Michael Heyns’ work can be found in private collections of major corporations and individual collectors in South Africa and abroad.
Rogerio de Andrade – Painter Artist. Born in Lourenzo Marques, Mozambique, in 1954. He came to South Africa in 1966 where he attended school in White River and Nelspruit in the old Eastern Transvaal. He finished high school in 1973, and carried on with his studies at the Pretoria Technikon where he obtained a diploma in graphic design in 1976. This was followed by a two year stint in the army. In 1979 he joined Turner, Venter & Machado in Johannesburg as a junior graphic designer. He has since worked at several studios as a graphic designer and is now creative/art director at Big Door, a design studio in Pretoria. In the past Roger exhibited with TAM – Tertulia de Artistas Mozambicanos, and more recently at the Sandton Civic Gallery. His artwork has become part of many private collections, locally and overseas.
Born, raised and situated in Pretoria East, Annerose received formal training in the style of realism. However she soon found realism to be too restrictive and thus, inspired by expressionism, she began to experiment with unconstrained brush strokes. The result: an alluring play of colour. Annerose is a true romantic who comes alive when painting; “colour is my day long obsession, joy and torment” – Claude Monet.
Johan van Coller is a self-taught artist. Though he does not paint full time, art has beome his passion and he has been preparing for this second career as an artist for the past eight years.
He was born on 6 September 1953 in Dundee, Kwazulu Natal, South Africa and later moved to Sasolburg in the Free State, where he was raised. Johan eventually made Pretoria his home in 1980 and this is where he lives with his wife Rina and their two children.
Johan’s medium of choice is oil and the theme of his work is often of street scenes, landscapes, still lifes, portraits and figure studies. In the development of his own style, Johan allows himself to be influenced by the British master, Trevor Chamberlain, and by South Africa’s Errol Boyley, Adriaan Boshoff, Alexander Rose-Innes and Christiaan Nice.
He has participated in various group exhibitions and his work can be found in a number of collections, including that of the State Security Agency.
