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- Artist Name:
- Grady Zeeman
- Location:
- South Africa
- Statement:
- Being a South African artist, I experience my art as a voice, expressing my innermost joys and fears. I am very
susceptible to emotions and use this attribute to observe
people, their experiences and that of my everyday
surroundings.
I mainly paint with oil on canvas and work from my own photographs, my models mostly being my children ,husband or our farm workers. As I constantly seek wisdom in life, so I do in my art. I continuously study the great artists like Monet, van Gogh, Gaugin, Renoir, Modigliani, Picasso, Salvador Dali and the German expressionists. By not only studying their art, but their lives as well, I am united with these wise souls on a deeper level that transcends time and space. This, as well as the vibrant African sun I am exposed to, inspires bright colouring in my paintings and allow me to portray both the fragile and the bold
- Biography:
- I grew up in a small town, Swellendam in the Western Cape of South Africa. During my primary school years, we were taught art and craft which I absolutely loved, however when I reached high school no art classes were taught. Still I was very fortunate, for my father inspired me to do technical drawings of vintage cars, which he did from the age of 14. These endless hours of drawing cars helped me tremendously to see perspective and motion.
After school I applied to study fashion design at the Cape Technicon. Art at school level was compulsory, however they gave me a chance. The first six months were rather difficult as I had to learn everything my classmates learned in 5 years. Using different media was a challenge, however I fell in love with sketching.
After working in Cape Town, I married a farmer from my hometown and continued my sketching, my subjects changing from nudes to Swellendam’s old houses.
I also found myself drawn to oil painting. I studied with the artist Wendy Martell and took part in an exhibition at the Hugo Naude Gallery in Worcester.
I stopped painting for a couple of years, because my two children needed their mother and my husband needed help on the farm.
This break was not in vain, for when I started painting again I was emotionally riper with more life-experience. This could immediately be detected in my work.
During September 2005, two of my friends, Ansie Malan and Elzebet Beyers, and I painted the roof (4,8m x 20m on both sides) of Xairu, a farm stall near Swellendam. The theme was “ An African Fantasy”
The three of us also did a portrait of the acclaimed San artist, Vetkat Regopstaan Kruiper, where after he did some San art on the painting. This painting is currently in the possession of the San community.
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