Inspiration: Jonkershoek

I joined Intuition Sunday Walks again, and as always it was an incredible experience - an inspiring, relaxing, thought-provoking, educational, spiritual, awe-inspiring and humbling experience. I forgot to take my camera, so used my phone to take some pictures. I used Photoscape to just give each photo an extra little bump up the aesthetic scale - to do justice to the scenes I experienced, something that's never truly possible with a photograph, in my opinion. We can try as hard as we can and we can express certain aspects of the landscape, or the flowers, or the mountain, but we can never truly and fully represent it. However, artists like me will never stop trying either! And these photographs will be the inspiration of some new artworks. 

"Soetdoring" & photoblocks

These are small artworks - photographic blocks and a nature study of the seedpod and leaf structure of the Soetdoring tree or "Acacia Karroo". These are currently available for sale, please contact me at art@janetbotes.co.za to find out more, or buy them online at hellopretty.co.za/janet-botes.

"Soetdoring"

watercolour and pencil on art paper

270 x 210mm (unframed size)

2012

Soul Awakening and a sketch challenge

I've posted two new posts on the StateoftheART blog that I'd like to share:

I attended the opening of Michaela Rinaldi's exhibition "Soul Awakening" at StateoftheART gallery in Shortmarket Street, Cape Town, and posted my thoughts and photos. Have a look (click here)...

And as part of my preparation for my own exhibition, I've decided to take part in a month-long drawing-a-day challenge that a very talented friend, Mark Shaun Hopkins, initiated. My first sketch(es) are posted on the blog (click here). Are you going to join the challenge? One drawing, sketch or doodle, created daily in a maximum time of 30 minutes. Not a huge challenge, since it only asks 30 minutes of creativity from you! Will you join?

Solitude

solitude can bring you wisdom
 but love and companionship brings growth.
I walk among mountains within desert landscapes
to find myself. to find inner peace.  

I then return to the people I love,
and share the insights, wisdom and happiness.
And so together we can learn and grow. 

Next time I take you with me into the desert,
into the mountains. 

JB, 2014. 

Photographs taken in the South Sinai, Egypt.

Inspiration: Suikerbossie

Photos taken during a group hike with Intuition Walks (intuitionwalks.com), doing the Suikerbossie Contour walk, towards Orange Kloof & Constantia Nek through a indigenous forest to the waterfall at Myburgh's Kloof.

A quick post to share new photography

When I went on two of the Intuition Walks - the first to !Khwa Ttu on the R27, and the second on the Shipwreck route and Sirkelsvlei in Cape Point Nature Reserve - I had slide film in my Pentax K-1000 camera. 

And this week I (finally) got the film developed, asking them to cross-process - essentially this just means that they develop the slide film as 'normal' film, rather than as slide film. And these photographs are some of the results:

Many of the photographs didn't come out quite as I planned or expected, but you'll see elements or sections of them in the new Nuances work that I'm working on! 

New work - Nuances: A Cape Journey

New work in the NUANCES series

Nuances: A Cape Journey

by Janet Botes

Limited edition print - photographic collage printed on archival paper

W:87cm x H:52cm (paper size, unframed)

2013

Edition Size: 5

R3 300 at www.StateoftheART.co.za

This is the first Nuances work with a human figure present. The deeper message of the Nuances series centers around environmental conservation, and this artwork acknowledges the role that we as human beings play as part of nature. We form part of nature, but can also step up and take our place as guardians, not masters, of the natural landscape. While other Nuances works focus on specific areas in South Africa, this work incorporates photographs from various places in the Northern Cape, Western Cape as well as Eastern Cape.

Inspiration: Paarl Mountain

During the weekend I spent time in Paarl Mountain nature reserve with hubby Pierre Bezuidenhout and during our walk took some photographs of the breath-taking scenes and interesting plant life surrounding us. Expect to see glimpses of these in my new artworks, I feel very inspired by our outing!