Artists 

Adele van Heerden

Cape Town artist Adele van Heerden pays close attention to complexity. As an artist and curator living in a world where the binary has been replaced by the spectrum, Van Heerden revels in the beauties of the multifarious, creating intricate pieces in ink & gouache on paper which juxtapose the natural world with human history. Based in Cape Town, South Africa, she produces finely detailed, often layered work as a personal response to the particular social, historical and political conditions she finds herself in.
After graduating with a degree in Fine Arts from the Ruth Prowse School of Art in 2010, Van Heerden continued her studies at the University of South Africa, obtaining a BA in History and Politics. In 2015, she graduated from the University of Cape Town with an Honours Degree in Curatorship.

Claude Chandler

Claude Chandler is an artist based in Cape Town with a N.Diploma in Fine Arts. Working from SideTrack Studios which he also manages. He produces large abstract portraits using his unique 'stamp' technique.
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He has taken part in numerous art fairs, locally and abroad. Inspired by digital technologies and ways one perceives the world through the lens and screen. His work revolves and comments on 'ways of seeing' and the illusions of the digital self/avatar.

Marli Steyl

I am a Fine Artist working mainly in oils and alcohol ink. My point of origin is my place as a young, white, Afrikaans-speaking female in post-colonial, post-Apartheid South Africa.
I have been sheltered in my parents’ middle-class, suburban home in Randburg, Johannesburg. As I have ventured outside this privilege I was born into, I am frequently challenged to question my identity and the advantages I have been afforded.
Family photographs are the source material for many of my paintings. They are snapshots of the joyous experiences and memorable moments of my parents and grandparents from the 1930s to the early 1990s. I return to these images with difficulty as they resemble the memories and histories of many Afrikaner families during the Apartheid years. Documented moments of joy that appear to disregard political and social wrongs of the time.
​In post-Apartheid South Africa, I feel that many white, Afrikaans-speaking people need rehabilitation. I, therefore, use my art to explore the past and present to reconcile the privilege of my birth, and the pride and love for my heritage, with being a truly South African in our new democracy.

Tanja Truscott

Tanja Truscott’s artwork is born from a fascination with painterly abstraction and the power it has to engage us visually and emotionally. She works intuitively and is inspired by sounds and sensations from the outdoors ... or just as easily by literature, poetry and music. Any of these can be the impetus for the colours and tools she chooses, the marks made and the shapes that emerge.

Born in the Netherlands but now living and working in Cape Town, Truscott received a BA in Graphic Design from the University of Stellenbosch in 1984 and a Diploma in Secondary Teaching in 1990 from the University of Cape Town. She has taught art and after many years spent in educational publishing as an illustrator, graphic designer and art director, she turned to painting full time in 2015. Truscott’s most recent group exhibitions in Cape Town (2019) include Secret Garden at Art-on-Avenues and Nano 1.3 at the Barnard Gallery. Her work is represented in private collections both locally and abroad.

Robyn Pretorius

Robyn Pretorius started her art journey from a young age but only after a career shift committed herself to become a full-time artist and invested more time in art research.  This encouraged her to create a significant body of work which would introduce her into the local art industry. Since then she has landed her first solo exhibition in 2016 at Youngblood Gallery and extended her reach in the local art industry.
Her art practice has shown commitment to the local art scene but has also reached the international audience with exhibitions in New York and Europe. She attended her first art residency at Glo’art, Global Art Centre in Belgium in 2018. This experience allowed her to experiment, explore and refine her practice. Today, Robyn Pretorius has grown tremendously as a local emerging artist and uses her art to uplift and convey a narrative which is greatly inspired by her community and personal experiences.

Mary Visser

My studio practice is centered around experimentation and the invention of spaces. In the studio I make, test, play and push around materials, colour and forms. All these collages, 3-d objects and scraps of studio detritus along with numerous images of fashion, interiors and art end up scattered on the studio floor. I look to these images and non-images to trigger chance happenings in my paintings. As I paint I deliberately make a mess and then try and fix it.

Rentia Retief

Rentia Retief (b.1992, Caledon) received a Bachelors in fine arts from the University of Stellenbosch in 2014, and an Honours in illustration in 2016. She currently lives and works in Somerset West where she spends a lot of time in the surrounding nature and mountains which serves as a great influence on her work.

Rentia captures her experience of the great outdoors by means of drawing and painting.

in her work she expresses her awareness of our brief presence in this world and captures the fleeting moment by often drawing on a grand scale and in en-plain-air. Her drawings are an attempt to share the feelings that transcend the visual perception of her surrounds; with the movement and energy of the natural elements that contributes to the mark making process. These landscapes are an invitation for the viewer to feel the moment, even though one cannot perceive it in its entirety. from her study to capture the movement of the moment she furthermore explores what we understand as a wild or unhindered environment in comparison to what is considered as tame.

Karen Wykerd

The central theme of my work is the urban landscape and having moved to Cape Town from Johannesburg five years ago has been instrumental in influencing my work. This city has continued to captivate me with its abundance of beautiful historical buildings, numerous parks, promenades and harbour, it is truly a city for the people. One of my main motivations as an artist is the pursuit of light ‐how it defines a scene and changes our experience of it at any one time. How a scene can be entirely different in the morning and then again in the evening. I love this quote by the artist John Constable. “The sky is the source of light in nature and it governs everything”
In my work I aim to highlight the beauty of the daily commute. These unassuming everyday scenes that become common place due to routine are transformed and elevated through use of colour, light and layers of thin washes. Suddenly the viewer is confronted with something dream like and worthy of being documented. Not only do I take a closer look at roads most travelled, but also zoom out and paint large expanses of sky and the city from a far. I view the city as a stage on which daily acts, significant or insignificant are played out.

Nienke Strydom

Nienke Strydom is an emerging young female artist situated in Cape Town. Strydom’s background and education in art has led her to have a strong foundation and introduction to the art industry which inspired her to follow her passion for art. Strydom graduated Cum Laude with a BTech Degree in Fine Art (2019) at the Nelson Mandela University and became a member of the Golden Key Society for her exemplar academic record. 
Strydom’s artworks are inspired by the French philosophers Gille Deleuze’s theory on Becoming and Jacques Derrida’s theory on Deconstruction.
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Looking at the South Africa’s society and media in contemporary times, South African women are risking their bodies on the picket-line by challenging beauty standards and stereotypes in society and the media.
Strydom prints her full body on her artworks in order to use art as a process of catharsis to deal with her body image. Printing her body with ink as medium on surfaces like, tiles and boards, she references the intimate, private space of the bathroom which is the space where women are ritualistically interrogating their bodies physically and emotionally in a process of deconstruction and reconstruction. Strydom’s body of work reveals this process women go through in their private spaces by rising it to a higher aesthetic through art in order to challenge contemporary society and media and celebrate ones true becoming.

Joanna Lee Miller

I paint landscapes and portraits to hold onto a moment in time, to feel present, to celebrate being alive, and to connect each of us to what is deep within us. I paint en plein air (in the open air, outdoors) and from life. My style is expressive, bold, quick – often because this is exactly what is required to capture the fast-changing light and quickly moving clouds. I am captivated by my natural environment and the endless challenge to render in paint the beauty I see around me. I apply my academic training to bring realism to my paintings, yet I leave plenty of space for bright, unexpected colours, and stylised shapes to bring out the essence of my subjects.
Art for me is like a mirror to existence. Art causes me to feel, validates and contains my feelings, gives me a sense of belonging in this world, and helps me understand my place. I aim for my art to bring this sense of presence and connection to others, as we share in our human experience
​I have recently returned to Cape Town, the city of my birth, after studying for three years at the Florence Academy of Art in Italy. Prior to this, I lived and worked in New York, London and Singapore, pursuing a corporate career in Change Management and Human Resources, before committing to my true passion – celebrating nature and people with canvas, brushes and oils.

Aimee Lindeque

​Aimee Lindeque was born and raised on a farm in Mpumalanga, South Africa. After matriculating In 2013, she moved to Cape Town to study Fine Art at Michaelis UCT (university of Cape Town) where she majored in Sculpture and Art History. After graduating with a Bachelors in Fine Art, she became a full time artist in Cape Town.

Aimee creates intricate watercolour and acrylic paintings, ink drawings, murals and illustrations. Since childhood, she has developed a deep love for Illustration and cartoons. The works of Jean Giraud and Martin Handford have had a large influence on her art. She enjoys doing studies of daily life, absorbing a wide variety of experiences and moments. Her work can be seen as a kaleidoscope of surreal imagery that references these experiences. She playfully describes her work as "Hieronymus Bosch meets where’s Wally".