July | 2012 |

Jake’s Sunday Post theme this week, is “Valuable.” I see that many of you have shown us that your family are your most valuable assets, whilst others have said that a good education is the most valuable thing a person can have. Others have said that time is the most precious gift we are given. I agree wholeheartedly with all these sentiments.

A couple of days ago, I did a post about my sister’s grandson’s birthday party, and sent her the link. When I called her to ask if she’d looked at it, she informed me that she’d been busy since 8am that morning, and hadn’t had a chance to even look at her computer. Her day had started off with fetching a young teenage boy from one of the African townships several miles away, and taking him to her art teacher for a lesson.

Here’s how it came about. Some time ago, her husband happened to pop into a small art gallery on the KZN Midlands tourist route. He saw there a painting done by a young African boy, and decided to buy it.

The owner of the gallery, on learning that my sister was an artist, invited her to take some of her work to display there. She asked to meet the young artist, realising that he had considerable talent, and decided that she needed to do something to encourage and help him. After only six hours, over two mornings, this is what he painted. His two mentors had showed him different painting techniques, and how to mix colours. He just ‘got it’. Isn’t this wonderful?

The time and effort spent with him, helped him to improve on his valuable talent, and of course, now he’s seen what he can do, he is so enthused to carry on with his art. Life isn’t at all easy for Mxolisi Nxele living in a township near Dargle.

He is 17-years-old, and only in Grade 8 at school. Schooling here goes up to Grade 12, so he still has four years to go. He lives with his sister in very humble, overcrowded conditions, and was quite overwhelmed when he walked into my sister’s lovely spacious home. He was fascinated to see a computer for the very first time. Just imagine, a teenager who has no idea how to use a computer. Have you ever heard of such a thing these days? He goes to the local school, but obviously they have insufficient equipment to teach their pupils adequately. It’s so very sad, and we can only hope that our government will one day very soon, get its priorities right and realise that the children of today are our country’s future, and its most valuable asset.

When he left a couple of days later, to go back home, he said that he’d had such a happy time with my sister and her two grandsons. She is going to keep in touch with Mxolisi, and continue encouraging him with his art. As Anatole France, the French poet and author once said, “Nine-tenths of education is encouragement.” I’m sure that now his talent has been recognised and nurtured, with help, he’ll go on to greater things.

I’m now mulling over an idea in my head. To carry on painting, he obviously needs paints and canvasses, which don’t come cheap. He’s gone home with some, to tide him over, but I was wondering if I sent an article to a couple of our local newspapers, whether they might publish it. There may be some readers who have art materials lying unused in their homes, which they would be willing to donate. What do you think?

Ailsa of “Where’s my back pack” fame, has posted a new travel theme, on WordPress. This week it’s ‘Art’, and as I have an artist in my family, I thought I’d take the opportunity to show you some of her work. Walking into my sister’s house, one is confronted with paintings absolutely everywhere. Even her kitchen looks like an art gallery.

Lately she’s sold quite a few, and others are out on consignment, so the walls aren’t quite as cluttered. She has always been in the arts, having been an opera singer, model and actress in her younger years, but never even considered trying her hand at drawing or painting.It was only seven years ago that one of her friends suggested that instead of just being two bored housewives, they should go for art classes. I recall how excited she was when she showed us that she could draw something very simple, and she became really enthused. After a few weeks, the art teacher closed her little school, and my sister and her friend had to find a new teacher. Mark Phillips really brought out her hidden talent, and we were most impressed,when not even two years later, she won second prize in the Nivea Art Competition.

She loves the African bush and enjoys painting the animals found there, especially leopards.

She also has a great talent for painting portraits of Southern African people portraying them in very interesting ways.

A couple of years ago, she was commissioned to do this painting of “The Three Faces Of Mandela,” for the re-opening of Mandela House in Soweto; one of her proudest moments.

Whenever we go to visit, she ushers me into her studio to see the latest work in progress. This week, it was a leopard drinking at a waterhole, from an original photo by Mark McWilliams.

and something entirely new; this shell which she’s just started.

Her assortment of brushes always fascinates me. I wouldn’t know which to use for what.

Looking around the walls of her studio, you would be sure to notice this framed newspaper pic from the 70′s, when in a moment of zany madness, and in need of a bit more income, she posed for a well known British tabloid. With this, she earned the dubious reputation of becoming the D’Oyly Carte’s one and only ‘Page Three Girl’. She didn’t tell our parents until some years later.

Freddy Lloyd O.B.E. who was the General Manager at the time, summoned her to his office, and she thought that he was going to give her notice for bringing the opera company into disrepute. Fortunately he had a great sense of humour, and merely suggested that they might find a way of interpolating her scanty outfit into the last night of the London season. Unfortunately the idea was dropped.

After my sister had been painting for a while, she discovered that our great, great uncle was non other than Jan Toorop, the first Dutch Symbolist Impressionist and Art Nouveau Painter, which most probably explains why she has such artistic talent. It might have just lain dormant and undiscovered, had she not taken that first step. I wonder how many of us have hidden artistic talents which we’ll never use.

If you’d like to see more of her paintings, you can go here.

Monthly Archives: July 2012

Our country’s most valuable assets are our children.

My sister’s art.