ALAN
Qualified in 1976 as an Art Teacher.Completed a BA Fine Art degree through UNISA in 1984.Taught Art (specifically Painting) until 1994 when I resigned from teaching and became involved in the picture framing industry.The framing is to a certain degree a creative outlet, but the desire to create from within something which speaks from the soul, never subsides. This desire juxtaposed with a lack of time and space to paint and an inherent love of the camera has led me into a space where I am experiencing what I used to teach – looking through a viewfinder and learning to see the negative spaces – learning to see what most normal people gloss over – finding the rich details in the surface textures of various structures ( both organic and geometric) – the interaction of volumes and voids, light and dark, and the subtleties of local colour – in essence it is a process of seeing the multitude of pieces of abstract art which just happen to be out there for us to latch on to and do something with. I do not consider myself a photographer at all but rather as someone who uses the camera and computer as if they were my easel and brushes and oils. In most cases the photograph which I choose to work on is heavily edited in order to remove it from the realm of purist photography and shift it into a dimension where the imagery, albeit quite abstract at times, is what I could be painting. Recently decided to turn to painting after 30 years, using the photography as source material.
ANNE
1976 – Completed Teacher’s Diploma with Art major. 1990 – resigned from teaching to follow an Art career. Exhibited for twelve years at Grahamstown Art’s Festival during which time I concentrated on painting on silk. I later started to paint whimsical landscape designs on glass. Due to some structural changes to our home, I started to dabble with mosaic elements on strategic walls. It soon became evident that mainstream mosaic work was to be fairly restrictive for my thinking. I started to explore the properties of polymer clay and this opened up a field which I found intensely stimulating. The process I follow after the clay has been textured, shaped and baked is very similar to the mosaic process except that I then use various means to add colour and sheen to the surfaces – the finished product is often seen as being pewter or metalwork by viewers.The first designs were relatively geometric in nature but gradually became more complex to the point where the clay work was combined with perspex photos. The landscape designs allow for a perspective and depth not evident in the earlier work. The clay has also recently been used in conjunction with canvas prints which has led to an entirely different direction in which the work is purely abstract in nature.