Category: Gallery
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Common Waxbills
Common Waxbills in my garden yesterday. Love the way they wag their tails like dogs. -
Grootevallei
This was my first order for 2016, a scene on the road from Knapdaar to our farm Silvermere. A view of the valley looking north over the game farm, Grootevallei. The painting was to be a gift for the regular hunter from Sweden, Carl Piper.
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Aloes, colour in the winter.
This painting was inspired by the wonderful sea of red, of aloes flowering in July on our quick trip to PE. It sold on the day it was posted on Facebook: Facebook.- Africanpainting.com
Beautiful Aloes flowering alongside the road near Cookhouse. -
Our July 2015 Trans-Karoo trip. -Paintings, part one.
It is about eight years since our last trip through our beloved karoo. So we took a short two day trip from, Colesburg to Hopetown, Prieska, Vanwyk’s Vlei, Canarvon and Loxton, where we spent the night. The next day we meandered home via Three Sisters, Murraysburg, Richmond, Middleburg and Steynsburg. The main purpose of the trip, was to find painting inspiration & to take a new batch of photos. It was a lovely trip, and these few are the first batch of paintings. More will follow in due course.
Dawn on the road between Colesburg & Philipstown. 
Derelict Farm House 
The Road Ahead, near Hopetown. 
Lonely Windmill, near Prieska. 
Love this old ruin, near Van Wyksvlei. It could make a perfect stage set. -
Just for something quite different, – A seascape.
With our sadly oppressive drought, it is soothing to contemplate a peaceful seascape. This was from a beautiful photograph taken by my friend, Riana, who lives on this beautiful coast near Mossel Bay. It inspired me to paint this sea scene in oils.
Seascape -
Karoo
Silvermere, farm road. 
Windmill & Pepper Tree 
Sunset Windmill. 
Moonrise reflection, with windmill. 
Windmill & water tank. 
Hill & house. -
Windmills of the Karoo
Windmill sketch When windmills propel gently through the breezes in lazy rotations, or spin frenetically facing into the strong winds that sweep across the karoo plains, I am often mesmerized by them. They knit together the vast expanses of earth and sky, in perfect stately harmony. Like elegant sentinels, windmills tower over the vast expanses of veld that surround them. They have held a deep fascination for me ever since I first settled here many years ago, and have featured quite prominently in most of the karoo landscape paintings I’ve done over the years. Here are 3 small veld scenes and one rough sketch, to add to the catalogue of windmill studies done time and again.
Teebus & Koffiebus with windmill. 
Dreunberg Windmill 
Farm road & windmill. -
Silvermere Meercats.
We have a family of meercats that live in several sets of holes around our farmstead. In this main picture they are gathered together around holes on an old ash heap. It is a perfect place to look out for danger on all sides. They have moved on since, but were there long enough for me to take some lovely photos from which I did this big rice paper painting, with watercolour and gouache. The smaller painting is not from one of my photos.
The Ash-heap Meercats 
Mom & Babe, Meercats -
Blue Cranes
Karoo Landscape with Blue Cranes Since May, a pair of Blue Cranes has settled on Silvermere. It is really quite unusual that they have made themselves at home here. Yesterday, while hanging out the washing, I heard their wistful calls and saw them circling high overhead. Usually we only see the occasional visiting cranes just passing through. We used to say that they were a rain omen, one of the many that farmers in our part of the karoo use to predict the rains. I have taken a few photos of ‘our’ pair, and felt inspired to paint them again, for the first time since way back in 1995 & 1997.
Two Blue Cranes In those days, we saw big flocks of them in the Caledon district, and several paintings followed. But, more recently I photographed a flock that we saw on a trip home from the Nieu Bethesda district. This big watercolour depicts the cranes in the landscape where I saw them. The other 2 sketches were drawn from photos of our new resident pair of beautiful and graceful Blue Cranes.
Sketching Blue Cranes
