A Gallery Opens in Hopefield

A lovely time was had by all when Pêrels & Pampoene Kunsgalery / Art Gallery opened in the little town of Hopefield. Hopefield is inland from Velddrif and one of our famed West Coast "towns-without-the ocean". There is a wonderful trend establishing itself in South Africa, as local as well as overseas visitors discover our small towns. I hope everyone in the country will take the opportunity to visit this town and gallery.I will do some paintings for the next blog, just to show some of the sights in that area.

Here are some photos of the delightful opening night. The second photo is of me and Gretha Helberg, the dynamic young gallery owner. The first and third photos are of me and my paintings. The rest: interiors and exterior of the building.

And I also had the honour of making the first sale, a canvas print of one of my works plus an order for more of those.

Amaryllis Belladonna

South Africa has its high summer season in December, and the place to find bloggers and artists is mostly the kitchen as social life is at its peak and family members get together. Somewhere in the middle of hot-hot January, a guilty feeling about 'not painting' gears its head! Thus it is time to pick up where I left off!

I started the year with a soft oil painting of a typical West Coast winter rainfall flower, but mine is a "flower-gone-crazy"! Amaryllis Belladonna or March lilies are supposed to flower in February/ March. Mine chose November to appear and January to disappear. Underneath the ground those large bulbs are resting now until who-knows-when! They sure love the very dry summer and the harshest and driest part of the garden!

I picked some to put indoors and there the soft pink flowers darkened to a deeper shade. In my photo I caught some of the light shining through the fragile drying flowers, heart-breakingly lovely in their final moment! Read more about March lilies here as well as on Diana's blog Elephant's Eye.

Nuweland - Barrels, Baskets and Bottles

Oil on Canvas

18"x14"

(457 x 356mm)

Farm stalls are popular out in the country, and here on the West Coast, such stalls are found along the R27 coastal road . My nearest farm stall is 11 km away and such a treat! Here we can buy fresh home-made bread warm from the oven. On the shelves there are many wonderful preserves, like my personal favourite: green fig preserve, and would you believe, you can also buy farm butter here!

The owner of Vygevallei Farm Stall and Wine Cellar is wine-maker Juan Louw. After experiencing wine-making everywhere in the country and even as far as California and New Zealand, Juan decided that their farm, Nuweland in the Swartland district between Malmesbury and Darling would be ideal for a cellar. Also that Route R27 would be a good position for a wine /farm stall!

It was here that I saw my next painting subject, the beautiful barrels, baskets and bottles, while the family tasted and fell in love with Juan's wines! I love it when the sharp West Coast light casts contrasts of light and shadow inside buildings, as you can see in the forms which I melted together and allowed some detail to dissolve into the background.

Read more on Nuweland Winery and its owner HERE

If your language is Afrikaans, you will be proud to learn that the labels of these wonderful Nuweland Wines are written in Afrikaans! ( Lees die volle artikel in DIE BURGER )

About the Blog Award Finalists I still have no news, but will post links when I receive notice!

The 2011 South African Blog Awards

The first leg of the 2011 South African Blog Awards end 7 days from now! Will you vote for me on that large red icon on the right?

This serene tableau at Saldanha Bay caught my eye. The little yacht seemed quite neglegted and not in use anymore. But how elegant are those lines!!! In real estate one often hears about a house advertised as "a decorater's dream". This could be the yachting equavalent!

We owned a yacht with a Lello form and sailed a lot, as I mentioned before, but don't ask me to count the rigging. I battled so much with those thin lines, there was no way on completing the painting that I was going to go back to see whether they were all there!

Don't forget to vote for me in "Travel" on the 2011 South African Blog Awards! (This is new to me, but we are actually encouraged to canvas for votes.....everyone is welcome to vote but only one vote per e-mail address is allowed)

Waterblommetjies (Aponogeton distachyos)

Waterblommetjies also known as Cape pondweed, Cape hawthorn or Cape asparagus, is an ingredient in one of the most loved traditional dishes in the country called waterblommetjie-bredie (This word is a mouthful!!!!) While I lived briefly in other provinces of South Africa, I had to rely on the tinned products to make the popular stew. Here, of course, I am so close to many traditional food sources: only 90 km from where the bokkoms are harvested and a 3 minute walk from crayfish and other seafood. The nearest dams for harvesting waterblommetjies are on Lelieblom Farm in the Darling district. (The farm where I get so much material for my blogs!!)

I find that they appear in the markets more and more and this might mean that they will soon be available in fresh form all over the country. The ones I painted here were from a large fruit and veg market. The first people to utilize these greenish hard little flowers growing on long thin grass-like stems, were the Khoikoi people. They used it in stews, mostly with mutton, onions and potatoes and flavoured with salt, pepper and sorrel. Sorrel, of course grows in springtime so it is available at the same time as the waterblommetjies, and it is used to give a slightly acidic taste to the dish. I do not use the common garden sorrel at all, as it is much safer to have the plant positively verified by an expert. In fact, we will only eat it if three experts point them out! The little sorrel flowers on my cooked dish was placed there briefly for the photo!

Recipes? Just do what comes naturally. I always fry some onions first, then some lamb knuckles, add cubed potatoes and water, stock or wine and prepare for a slow simmer. Add the sorrel only if you know your garden weeds! The waterblommetjies are added last and steams on top of the dish as they soften and break up quickly. Mixed herbs, a little salt and some white pepper are a must. We find this dish filling and would eat it with salad things only, but rice is the traditional accompaniment.

For soup: Steam the waterblommetjies with potato and onion in a little milk and vegetable stock. Flavour with garlic and the usual dried herbs/salt/pepper. Liquidize, serve and enjoy this healthy vegetarian soup with some warm crusty bread.

I was unable to visit a waterblommetjie harvesting, but in the background I painted a man, knee-deep in water, harvesting the plants and putting them in a floating dish.

(Thanking South African Tourism for the photo of the harvesters)

Master and Commander

A large part of the West Coast consists of farm lands and countryside. In between you will find our beloved small towns, fondly known as "dorpies". The atmosphere is rural, to say the least! I often visit Lelieblom Farm and there I have met some other farmers too. I need to see the milk farms especially because the products from Darling Dairies are well known all over the country in food stores. I also needed an excuse to paint a colourful rooster, so here it is!

The picturesque roosters at Lelieblom Farm are known to rush through the house to reach the front garden as soon as a door opens! I chose to paint this colourful red guy! In the painting I placed him in the foreground so that all else will seem small. Look at that assertive stance! As a little girl I was chased by a ferocious rooster, they do that, don't they? I call my painting "Master and Commander", because of the bossy attitude!

My West Coast Calendar and some Websites

My WEST COAST CALENDAR is now available in the year of your choice and can be ordered from RedBubble.

Here is the link, and for book readers, here is the site to find it: www.redbubble.com/people/marietheron/calendars/7661685-west-coast-chronicles. RedBubble calenders are printed on excellent paper and the images (all 13 of them) may be framed afterwards.

Here are some websites where my work can be seen:

To find my blog: http://artistmarietheron.blogspot.com

My fashion fun blog: http://frenchbelles.blogspot.com

Viewing or buying original art: www.Southafricanartists.com/home/marietheron

Calenders, cards and prints: http://marietheron.redbubble.com

Awesome Sunsets

Sunsets at Kabeljoubank!!! Having lived here for so many years, our sunsets still remain a spectacular phenomenon! Is there some science, I often wonder, like the science that can measure sound to measure this burst of colour? Should there not be a formula by which I can measure the variety and intensity?

There are evenings when the waves stubbornly "ignore" the sunset and remains unmoved! Then again, like some weeks ago, everything was tainted pink, right up to the pebble-stones at my feet.

I posted some photos of our sunsets and by contrast, the sunset photo I took on the East Coast of Zanzibar last week! I realise that "Bambi Boerbok" has been on show on my blog far too long! Now you know where I've been! :-)

Bambi Boerbok

What a strange title, you may say! But our true South African Boerbokke or Boer Goats are a strong and healthy breed, world famous and already bred in places as diverse as Norway, Texas, New Zealand and Australia. I am fortunate, because for me to see a true farm on the West Coast, I need only need to head for Lelieblom Farm near Darling. The wonderful thing about Lelieblom is it's realness, maintained in a natural old-fashioned style by Mike and Karen Basson! This is not a farm bought by investors and turned into a pedicured and rebuilt 5-star international resort (as happened to many farms the last couple of years); but a real-life African farm reminiscent of the earlier settler days.

I love the earth, the barn-turned-home & farm restaurant, the poultry running around and all the farm animals - an artist's dream, as Maree would say! Most of all, I love the sight of these Boerbokke! I asked Karen about their natures and had to laugh at the answer I received: "friendly, curious, and extremely naughty! No garden, fence or tree is safe with them around!" (In vain I asked Karen for some wild aloes- they were all eaten! Ouch!)

Today I present TWO paintings. Pretty Bambi Boerbok is so sweet! Those pink lips turn into whiskers and he will sport a beard later on! Lucky are those with black or brown faces as the colour protect their eyes! I painted the background all white and quickly dabbed and in the stones, grass and foliage, all wet-in-wet.

The second painting is a large fantasy scene, which I later want to paint larger still! The animals and background belong to Lelieblom Farm but the girl and fence were imagined. It is called Sweet Sleep at Noon, based on a poem by Virgil. This work is an oil on canvas board and I used the little wooden artist's mannikin to work out the proportions for the girl.

Aloes in the Garden

This is the year that I will have to invest in a book on aloes, as I have just planted my 12th type. In a previous post I painted Aloe mitriformis, the wild West Coast aloes that cover the rocks near the ocean.

In the meantime my own garden grew well and the aloes grew large, and some of them became prolific. I called a large aloe with ferocious thorns "Old Buster". This year at last three fat orangey-red plumes appeared on old Buster! An occasion for a painting done in acrylics on canvas board, making use of paint brushes, toothpicks and cotton buds, all as tools for creating textures.

Aloes attract a lot of birds and you will see in my photos how birds eat down from the top, treating the aloes like corn-on-the-cob! I grabbed a few seeds to dry, and left the rest for these pretty Cape Canaries.

Kabeljou Bank

I have often painted here and told my readers of some of the happenings at Kabeljou Bank. This part of the coast is so beautiful but very inhospitable.

On 9 December 1896, The British Peer, commanded by Captain Jesse Jones hit the rocks while on her way from London to deliver tea, coffee, machinery, pianos and building materials to Cape Town. Even to this day, pieces of building materials wash ashore. Many lives were lost. At a salvaging operation in 1979 the bell was found. ( 33 degrees 30.40S, 18 degrees 18.17E )

Of course there are also lovely bits of history associated with Kabeljou Bank. This is the spot where Cape visitors came by horse cart for picnics in the flower season during the nineteen-twenties. They watched how the chinkeninchees were picked to export to London. And here, throughout the autumn and winter months hundreds of snoek are still hung out to dry.

My painting is a mixed media piece of black craft paint, acrylic and watercolour paints, oil pastels and oil thinning medium.

Source for The British Peer: Shipwrecks and Salvage in South Africa by Malcolm Turner.

Shark in the Bay!!!!!

When I started this blog about the quiet West Coast of South Africa, I thought that I would really have to hunt for stories to tell and paint. I knew that I would sometimes have to squeeze a story out of a rock! Yet, so many things just happen. And here we have a shark in the bay a very short walk from my home!

The surprising thing is that one not usually expects sharks in such cold water! Yet we saw some monster through the binoculars one day while following the cormorants feeding. This is a baby whale shark of 6 meters long. We cannot determine why it died, but I am glad that the sea dumped it on this very quiet spot where it will not be crowded and prodded. We had only about two sunny days, so mostly a very cold tide washes over it and I hope that one of our big winter storms will return it to the ocean. Little Mitzi never blinked an eye and automatically accepted the large body in its final rest. What was truly strange was that she barked angrily every time the tide pushed in to wash over the shark!

Whale sharks have no teeth but their mouths are enormous grottos! I am so surprised by the bravery of West Coast fisherman going out on their small boats!

My quick sketch with white acrylic paint on black cartridge paper takes its style from the marks on the skin of the whale shark.

There is Nothing like Farm Food

The West Coast is well known for unique eating-out experiences. Some restaurants just offer a beach shelter commonly built from natural vegetation as protection from the elements; others offer equally rough-and-ready indoor experiences. One of the most popular is the Boesmanland Farm Kitchen on lovely Langebaan Lagoon. Good food is the main thing here, more important than any props, crockery or glossy interior design. We were lucky when our friends booked a Sunday lunch here. They live overseas and move in diplomatic circles. They have been everywhere in the world, but for them the true local and ethnic experiences are of primary interest.

We each found a sawn-off log with a piece of army blanket as seating, and were given a stack of paper plates and a plate holder. The idea is to go back for more food as many times you like. We started with the famous bread made from fresh homemade potato yeast and baked in the wood-fired oven. The food is made in the traditional way in large black pots over open fires. There are traditional snoek (fish) dishes available, but I had to skip those to indulge in "boontjie-bredie" with mutton as an ingredient.

A nice local touch was the singing duo who went from table to table, singing at the tops of their voices.The kids in the lounge were very thrilled to hear the popular local songs with the occasional Lady in R-edddddddd and other requests (and innovasions) thrown in.

My painting shows the preparations for true farm coffee which will be accompanied by koesister, (also called koeksister), a local sugar syrup-dipped plaited dumpling. I loved painting this blackened oven, it gives such an old atmosphere to the place.