Life of a Cape Town Artist

Living in Cape Town is a very great priviledge for any artist. Here we are surrounded by all the best life can offer you. There are the beaches, sometimes deserted due to weather conditions, sometimes the most colourful display of people, umbrellas and all that goes with a summer holiday. Then we have the mountains, the vineyards with their awesome autumn colours. The old Cape Dutch houses, the colourful houses of the Bo-Kaap and the townships all make wonderful subjects for painting.

I love to go out over weekends and drive around and take pictures of possible paintings. It is not always practical to take all the painting material but I do take a sketch pad to draw pictures and compositions as I go along. There is just SO much beauty around us here in Cape Town, if the old masters only knew!

This is a painting inspired by a deserted beach on a cold day!

Make sure to visit my website: Painted Canvas. There you will find most of my paintings and at very reasonable prices. You can view my earlier works, my more recent works in various categories, little gems, and commissions. You will also find out how to commission a painting, be it a landscape, still life or portrait of your dear dog, cat or mother-in-law!

Enjoy!

Painting the sea

I was still working from my book "how to paint landscapes". Actually it included seascapes. I tried this one. I think it is not so easy to paint waves, because you have to give the impression of the light going through the water. But then I consider myself an impressionist, so I must be able to give impressions. That is the job of an impressionist. Not always an easy job. I haven't done many seascapes after this one, where it is only the sea. Most paintings I do with the sea as part of it, the sea is more of a background, and not so close-up. But I will attempt that in future again.

This painting I sold to my oldest brother and made R7 profit. In those years R7 was a lot of money. I could buy my next canvas with that and maybe one or two tubes of paint. My mother was glad that I was finally starting to make some money. I hope that one day I will also be able to say like Renoir: "I think I am beginning to get a hang of this."