Google “SA Artist Website” and on the first page of results you will find Lesley Charnock. People frequently ask me if I know a certain artist. My answer normally is no.

I did not know of Lesley Charnock until I googled this morning and I only got to her site because it pops up under the results I searched for. Lesley is doing something right using her website to market herself and her art. Other than her painting Lesley also promotes her art classes and workshop on her site.

About Lesley Charnock

Lesly Charnock is a Cape Town based artist. She is a painter working in oil and acrylic and paints mostly South African scenes. That means that she paints, according to the images in her portfolio, rural black people in pastoral settings.

She seem to have an affinity for black women carrying stuff on their heads and for children playing. A recurring them is also the dirt road with either donkey carts or pedestrians.

Original artworks at affordable prices

She lists works for sale clearly on her site. The listings include titles, dimensions and prices which makes it easy to identify whether Lesley is in your taste and/or price range. Prices range between R 4800 and R 34 000.

Subject matter range are in the following groupings:

• Colourful groups of women with stuff on their heads
• Dirt roads with donkey carts (and a couple of cow paintings)
• Atmospheric sea scapes
• Horses in the mist
• Flower studies
• City scenes, street scapes, women carrying packages and children
• Women working in the field

Lesley’s paintings are strongly coloured and clearly shows an enjoyment of colour. Even though she attempts a variety of subject matter she manages to produce enough work in every category to get good enough at it. The paintings have a delightful and nostalgic charm about them.

Lesley’s website is well organised and easy to navigate. The basic design is a bit clunky and do not support the tone and feel of the artwork.

Links to Lesley Charnock’s website:

• Home page
• Original artworks for sale
• Contact Lesley Charnock

Lourens Joubert is a professional fine artist based in Stellenbosch in the Western Cape. Lourens first started his art education when attending Paul Roos Gymnasium in Stellenbosch, where he enrolled in the sculpture and art theory classes at PJ Olivier Art Centre. After matriculating in 1999 he furthered his education at Ruth Prowse School of Fine Art and Design in Woodstock, Cape Town. Lourens graduated in 2003 from Ruth Prowse with a four-year qualification, Postgraduate Degree in Fine Art.

Peter's Consumption, Lourens Joubert, 2009, 1802 x 1224mm, Mixed Media on panel (Oil, Acrylic paint and Gold leaf)

As well as taking part in numerous group exhibitions and art projects, Lourens has reached the finals of prestigious art competitions, most notably the SASOL New Signatures in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Recently Lourens has become a regular artist at Salon91 in Kloof Street, Cape Town, where most of his work can currently be viewed.

Lourens Joubert is an exhibiting artist in the Winelands VAN-Guard Exhibition from 8 June to 18 July 2010, exhibiting at Uitkyk Wine Estate, Stellenbosch.

Visit Lourens Joubert’s website.

Janet Botes was born in Vanderbijlpark and grew up in this riverside town to the South of Johannesburg. After studying graphic design at the Vaal University of Technology and attaining a BTech qualification cum laude, Janet worked and lived in Johannesburg, and then Pretoria, before settling in Cape Town.

Janet is a member of the arts collective SANGISA SANGISA with its focus on contemporary art, installation and performance art. Since 2008 she has participated in a number of group exhibitions such as the Association for Visual Artists (AVA) Members’ Exhibition 2009.

As children, Janet and her sister were often taken camping by their parents throughout this beautiful country. These trips included coastal towns, waterfalls in Mpumalanga, the Drakensberg, the West Coast, the Eastern Cape and annual visits to the family in Upington in the Northern Cape. This spurred a deep love and affinity for nature and animals, which inspires and guides most of her creative work. Other influences, interests and inspiration include people, other artists, magazines, film, performance art, spirituality, and culture. This results in a varied set of influences on Janet’s art and creative work – work that ranges widely across digital illustration, mixed media painting, drawing, assemblage, sculpture and installation.

Janet Botes is an exhibiting artist in the Winelands VAN-Guard Exhibition from 8 June to 18 July 2010, exhibiting at the Durbanville Hills Wine Estate and Uitkyk Wine Estate, Stellenbosch.

Artist’s statement

Recycling is a practice that has become essential because of our consumerist lifestyles and the amount of waste that accumulates in landfills and our oceans. This is the primary theme featured in my series of small scraperboard works, where images of waste and consumerism, but also landscapes, are scratched into the surface of scraperboard pieces and then combined with pieces of driftwood, found objects and found wood to create almost-random compositions and expressions and, in essence, recycling the materials that I use. The aim is to focus on how we ‘drift’ like flotsam through our lives, trying to attain more and more material possessions like motorcars, and to consume food and drink as a means of entertainment and relaxation and how this consumer-based lifestyle then accumulates into waste and rubbish that get dumped into landfills or on our beaches, or get recycled at recycling centres.

Regardless of the grim and troublesome connotations in my work and the inference towards being and living more sustainably and eco-consciously, the series is also meant to celebrate the beauty of nature and make us appreciate what surrounds us: the consumer-inspired images are combined and contrasted with the beauty of trees, which is illustrated in decorative branches and the use of wood in the artworks. My work aims to posit that even while we pollute the earth, there is still beauty around us, which we can appreciate and revere without falling into despair about the state of our environment. I aim to balance the evident disregard and obliviousness to pollution displayed by humans with the sacred nature and artistic appeal of trees and the natural environment, and thereby try to bring nature and our own lives closer together in the eyes of the viewer.

In his personal practice, contemporary poet and visual artist Kai Lossgott currently focuses on exploring green politics and systems theory through performance, experimental film and visual art like his engravings in plant leaves.

German by birth (1980), South African by upbringing, he currently lives and works in Cape Town. Kai’s work has been widely exhibited for numerous South African art award shows such at the Sasol New Signatures, ABSA L’Atelier Awards and Thami Mnyele Awards since 2004, as well as screened at avant-garde film festivals on five continents. He is represented in a number of top corporate art collections. Kai’s poetry has been published in various respected South African journals. The artist is also known for his public performance collaborations on the Spier Contemporary 2007, Infecting the City 2009, the Badilisha Poetry X-change 2009, Cape 09, and Out The Box 2010. He is the curator of the CITY BREATH Festival of Video Poetry and Performance (2010), initiating and bringing together short interdisciplinary and experimental films from five South African cities.

Kai Lossgott holds a BJourn from Rhodes University (documentary filmmaking and dance theatre), an Advanced Diploma in Visual Arts from UNISA, and an MA in creative writing from the University of Cape Town, all three cum laude. He has written and edited tertiary coursework and lectured at various South African universities, as well as facilitating community arts initiatives.

Kai Lossgott is a featured artist in the Winelands VAN-Guard Exhibition from 8 June to 18 July 2010, exhibiting at the Oude Libertas Gallery.

Artist’s statement

My performances, poems, experimental films and plant leaf engravings exist in the tension between the natural (silence and neural sensitivity) and the cultural (language and information systems). In my drawings and in my writing, I persue the trails of thoughts and bodily sensations; the sensitivity and the vulnerable inner instincts which stimulate our language patterns.

Translating these traces into my plant leaf engravings, I seek contact with the surface of the leaf, often close to the point of its complete destruction. Working in turns with insect bites (nature), by hand (manual), by typewriter (industrial), or with laser-engraving (post-industrial and digital), I bring the human mark-making impulse to bear on living plant tissue. The act of engraving highlights the fragility of this material and the brittle connection between human and environment. Like human skin, plant leaves scar, heal, retain a record.

The interconnectedness of life is evident in an ever-expanding language network of complex mathematical and biological relationships. These systems can no longer be comprehended by the human mind unaided by technology. Through our obsession with building knowledge and information systems, we are losing our living relationship with the natural world. We are an inextricable part of these living systems, and in disregarding them we disregard ourselves. This means that we are unable to see to some of our most important needs – the need for silence, for space, for sensitivity.

Love and longing are second nature to poetry. As a poet, I seek out the broken links in the forking and branching of language systems, rhythms and meanings, aiming to reconnect mind, nervous tissue and ecology for readers and viewers fighting daily for survival. In the evolving myths of the 21st century, we can expect to survive as part of the network, integrating with the mobile information systems we have created and populate. At the same time, biotechnology is decoding the very secrets of life on this planet. As many seek an approach beyond what pure science can deliver, ancient spiritual practises have resurfaced in our times as effective methods of dealing with the constant presence of stress.

My working process draws on Buddhist and Taoist meditation, which offer an embodied and integrated approach to the system, outside the workings of the conscious mind. This is a natural ‘language’ of perception, an unconscious rhythm of silence and sound that runs through every living thing. All human beings regularly perceive this in the state of crossing from wakefulness into sleep. Many of my dry-point engravings, drawings and artist books are attempts to depict this state, in which both mind and body are at rest.

Neil le Roux was born in 1985 in Pretoria and has lived in Gauteng, the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape. Currently he lives in Kuils River, Cape Town. Neil graduated from Stellenbosch University with a BA Visual Arts (Fine Art) degree in 2008 and had his debut solo exhibition called Revelating Now in September 2009 at Salon91 in Cape Town.

Neil le Roux is a featured artist in the Winelands VAN-Guard Exhibition from 8 June to 18 July 2010, exhibiting at Uitkyk Wine Estate.

Artist’s statement

Once you realise that you are always operating within a system, it becomes less important to break down systems, than to instigate your own systems within which to operate. Of course, one should always be aware that no system is free-standing and that all systems cross-pollinate and function through and within other systems,ad infinitum. Within the bigger systems or frameworks of culture, art, drawing, video art,the artist has the opportunity to operate in any manner he chooses, in other words, to work by any system he or she pleases (depending of course on the availability of resources, which is always a vital parameter to consider in any system).

It does thus not come as a surprise that it is in the creative arts, the supposed avant-garde trend-setting cultural barometer of civilisation, where these limitations are often expected and attempted to be dethroned for something novel.

I hold that there is nothing new – I have not yet found any evidence of creation out of nothingness. Maybe there was once creation ex nihilo, but as far as I can see, we are currently only shifting molecules around. I have, however, found much evidence of a complex and relentless dance of contraction and expansion, tension and release within the greater World of existence.

You will not find anything ‘new’ here; there is no ‘creation’ taking place. What you see in my art practice is not all that radical in terms of physical objects. There are familiar forms: ink and paper, and albeit perhaps presented in,as yet,unfamiliar arrangements to some, it remains a familiar form of sensory stimuli that permeates so many aspects of our contemporary existence. The repetitive and obvious use of my own, somewhat strict,systems within the work (which falls within many readily established broader systems such as drawing, fine art and manual labour) is an acknowledgement of the very fact that we cannot ever escape operating systems.

Many people would like to claim that ‘creativity’ and ‘freedom’ are found when boundaries are breached and transcended. Yet, if we consider our lot, we realise that there is always some set of parameters or limitations, which governs our experience of reality. For one system to be defied, another needs to be applied, and so we cannot claim to be limitless. Whether it is the weather, basic language rules, gravitational forces, or printer colour limitations, we always operate within a certain range of potential. It is within any system of operation, when parameters are acknowledged and well understood, that the cutting edge can emerge.

It was of course part of the Enlightenment era’s natural philosophies (which underpin so much of what humanity is still doing today) to dissect, understand and control nature. If one replaces the term ‘nature’ here with ‘systems’, ‘environment’ and/or ‘world’, one could easily think that a delineation of cultural practice harks back to the essentialist rationalism of Cartesian thought. I do not subscribe to these notions of dualism.

The supposed split between man and nature, subject and object, is but the inevitable problematic detritus of the linguistic system, which relies on dichotomies for its functioning. I rather maintain that we are as much a part of nature as it is a part of us. It is because of our implicit part in ‘all-that-there-is’ (i.e. my understanding of the World/ Being), that we cannot be said to create.

I am willing to compromise somewhat, but only as far as using the term, ‘co-creation’. Nothing stands alone, no atom is an island, and that is what makes our being so interesting, because every part plays an imperative role in the whole. There is an infinite synergy to be found in the multitude of complex interactions within our dynamic, sentient World. It is this synergy, manifested in the form of chronic revelation, which is incessantly showing itself, if we are but alert enough to observe it. It is often during the conscious entrancement of your senses by means of repetition that insights into the profound occur.

What excites me is the unpredictable magic that comes from such interaction or co-creation, even if that co-creation takes place within seeming limits, as it invariably does. This is the revelation: We are not creating; we are collaborating with the World.

Kevin Thomas graduated from Peninsula Technikon in 1994 with a National Diploma in Photography. He specialises in large format landscape photography.

From 1995 to1997 Kevin worked as photographic assistant to the commercial photographer Jan Verboom. From 1999 to 2008 he worked in the construction industry on the restoration of national monuments, specialising in artistic finishes.

In 1999 he exhibited his ‘Robben Island Landscapes’ for the Cape Town Month of Photography and in 2002 his ‘Richtersveld Landscapes’.

In 2007 he did a series of six landscapes as a corporate commission for Old Mutual. Since 2008 Kevin Thomas has been a full-fine art landscape photographer. He was featured in the 2009 March edition of Garden and Home magazine.

Kevin Thomas is a featured artist in the Winelands VAN-Guard Exhibition from 8 June to 18 July 2010, exhibiting at Neethlingshof Estate and Uitkyk Wine Estate.

Artist’s statement

A contemplative lens: an appreciation of the natural order through landscape photography

This body of work is dedicated to the study of the natural world. It reflects what I consider to be a worthy subject for my style of photography and philosophy. If we want to create a sustainable future we need to examine our relationship with the natural world and adjust our attitudes and actions to create balance and harmony.

We are only one species out of millions who inhabit this planet, and it seems that we have lost focus on how delicate the balance is between life forms that interact and participate in sustaining the life force of a truly magical expression of love and creativity. By pointing my lens at that which catches my attention, I hope to show and remind the viewer how phenomenal and beautiful the world is.

Suzanne Duncan was born on 28 August 1981 and majored in sculpture at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town, where she obtained an honours degree in 2006. Since 2008 Suzanne has been a resident at Greatmore Studios in Cape Town.

Suzanne has taken part in a number of exhibitions and art competitions, such as the 2009 Sasol New Signatures art competition at the Pretoria Art Museum. In 2008 she was one of the top ten finalists for the ABSA L’Atelier Awards.

She is represented in the Sasol art collection and the art collection of the University of Cape Town.

Suzanne Duncan is a featured artist in the Winelands VAN-Guard Exhibition from 8 June to 18 July 2010, exhibiting at the Oude Libertas Gallery.

Artist’s statement

My work centres on the corporeal and the premise of the body as a site of self-healing, renewal and repair, and of inherently possessing an erotic element. At the forefront of my work is the notion of a dichotomy of strength and fragility within the body, both as a structural organism and as a contributor and indicator of how we experience life.

In much of my work, I use my own body matter such as strands of my hair and fingernails as my material of choice to position myself in my own work for self-referential effect as well as to serve as evidence of my existence. When I make use of materials that come from other sources, I intend for the piece to act as a homage to the original owner of that particular material through the subject matter depicted.

Much of my work operates around the theme of subsistence, using only what is produced (such as my own body matter); thus the amount produced and the rate of production often prescribe the work.

The work I create rests on a decidedly labour-intensive process, these acts of containment and ritual were acquired as a means of channeling nervous energy into an object of desire. Because the actual art takes place during the creation of the work, the finished piece stands as the ultimate record of the process. I use other forms of traditional documentation, such as photography and video, to challenge and emphasise the distance of experience from the original piece, which documentation causes.

Recently I have taken to wearing my objects before displaying them, performing in them, increasing the intimacy of the relationships of the objects with my body, the pieces themselves stand as evidence of the laborious act and as fetishist objects.