You're invited: Get creative

GEORGE NEWS - The Wilderness Art Festival on 27, 28 and 29 February is an event not to be missed. It includes many highlights with several workshops and demos planned across the three days. Contact Carole Durrant at carole@bcreativedesign-print.co.za for more information or visit the Wilderness Arts Festival 2020 Facebook page.

HEIN BOTHA
Hein Botha will conduct a children’s painting workshop on Saturday 29 February at 11:00 at the Wilderness Hotel. He discusses inborn creativity and the importance of retaining a sense of play:

Mark-making, a primary impulse, has been a way of connecting and communicating long before the development of language.

It also represents the manifestation of the free flow of imagination, a fundamental encoded human ability which has been hindered and blocked by “civilisation’s” grownup imposed norms, dictates and entrenched perceptions.

We can learn a lot from looking at child art and discover how they connect and see the world around them as expressed through their rich, freeform, imaginative mark making. This also holds true for the rock art left by early people.

The more love and nurturing a child experiences, the greater the outpourings of their imagination onto paper. If only we can retain this free flow between heart, soul and hand as we become responsible grown-ups!

We are born creative - and then we grow up.

The impulse to respond to rhythm also pre-dates formal means of communicating. Just watch a child moving to music and study the trance dance of the San or the healing dances of North American Indian tribes. Our primal impulse to harmonise with sub-atomic particle dance and the pulse of the universe transcends pre-meditated thought.

Hein Botha

Today dancing is continuously evolving into a highly developed form of artistic expression, a complex art form demanding total physical and mental commitment. At a rudimentary level children demonstrate a natural ability to commit their being to a way of expressing themselves.

They will effortlessly act out their intuitive sensibility through motion and mark making. Children can show us how to reclaim our birthright of childlike creative play.

Forest temple - Hein Botha.

ESTEE HANEKOM
Estee Hanekom is doing a Regraft Demo on Friday 28 February at 12:00 at the Wilderness Hotel. She tells us more...
Estee HanekomI yearn to create an awareness of the urgency felt in redefining a human nature relationship that is one of closeness, and of shared essence.

My work, Regraft, is an attempt to graft a natural sensitivity onto its human counterpart, and so offer a lasting opportunity for viewers to reconnect with nature, and so experience themselves as part of nature. My choice to collect tree bark and transcribe them into works of art, without interfering with the life of the tree, is based in contemporary EcoART practice.

This practice is contrary to earlier forms of land art (of the 1960 and ‘70s) which caused significant impact on natural ecosystems. As such, I associate closely with EcoART’s intention to be entirely earth-friendly in its approach.

I have also come to accept John Grande’s aspiration of being “earth-sensitive”, and hope to embody this principle in my own work (cited in Carruthers 2006:25). My use of Enviro wave paper - considered ecofriendly - also provided a means by which I could promote the well-being of natural ecosystems despite my prolific use of paper.

Estee Hanekom creates earth-sensitive art.

KEVIN VAN NIEKERK
Kevin van Niekerk, The Coffee Artist, will do a live demonstration on coffee and paint pouring on Saturday 29 February at 14:00 at the Wilderness Hotel. He tells us more about his art:

Kevin van Niekerk

I am an artist from George and have been practising art throughout my life, from pencil sketches, murals and airbrushing to giving art classes. The mediums I use are coffee stains on canvas, mixed acrylic paint and oil pastels.

I aim to portray everyday life scenes and musicians, and am currently working on portraits of African faces. Emotion and storytelling are two of the main focus areas in my work. I studied Fine Art at PE Technicon and recently finished my NPDE at North West University.