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MargotHattingh

Background

I developed a passion for drawing and painting at an early age, and while still very young decided that I wanted to become an artist. I have had some formal training, but am mostly self-taught.

In my early 20s, instead of the planned move to Paris to further my art studies, I went on a safari and fell totally in love with the bush. An enduring fascination and passion for Africa, both as an idea as well as a place, was born. 

For the next 12 years, my partner and I permanently lived and travelled in the wild places of Southern Africa and what was then SWA. We photographed and wrote articles on wildlife as well as two books, Etosha and Zululand published by Struik in the early 80s. 

In spare moments my sketchbooks filled with eyes, ears - parts as well as whole animals; sometimes just a line of movement. The look of an early morning impala, eyes dew fresh filled with the glow of dawn, astonished by our presence.

Motherhood and a move to the Cape has expanded and deepened my perception and understanding of the underlying, mostly sub-conscious connection between humans and what we like to think of as 'our' world.

In the same way that there is a heartbeat's space between action and reaction, there is a gap - sometimes a chasm - between us and everything in our environment. In there, I believe we imbue people, animals, places and things with our 'shadow selves.' This is where I find my work.

On the surface the artworks may seem to range from highly realistic/figurative to abstract, but beneath that, they are all concerned with recording my explorations of an ever changing perception of reality - physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and of course mythical.

Profoundly rooted in Africa but with an inevitable overlay of European culture and history, I strive to develop a new reality where the two supposedly opposing cultures come together in a synthesis greater and more beautiful than the sum of its parts. 

I paint people and places, but return time and time again to what I call "Beasts," obsessed/possessed by certain animals and themes. I try to not only capture some physical likeness, some sense of 'Presence' but also to materialise the essentially invisible essence of the particular subject.

Technically the images are worked with a variety of media – sometimes singly, more often mixed on paper, masonite, wood, canvas or perspex. I use pastels, both oil and chalk, watercolour, acrylic, oils, resin and wax encaustic.

I am really enjoying printmaking, etchings, collographs and monotypes, as well as bronze sculpture, both relatively new directions for me. My bronzes are to be found at Cape Gallery.

In November 2004, I was delighted to be chosen to form part of a five person international volunteer team, all professional artists, working at the Nek Chand sculpture garden in Chandigarh, India, for a month. I am the only South African to have taken part in this program. This outsider art sculpture garden, the second most visited site in India after the Taj Mahal, was begun in the 1950s, using waste material. The oldest sculptures are now needing sensitive, painstaking repair.

I am one of the invited printmakers, representing South Africa, at an international printmaking exhibition, the theme being "Strangers." This is currently on show in Canada, at the Xchanges Gallery in Victoria. Thereafter the exhibition travels on to Quebec and Vancouver. From there it will go to the States, New Zealand, and possibly back here in 2007. A website about the exhibition is currently under construction.

Sometimes I experiment with fabric. I have had a fibre art, mixed media wall hanging accepted for the prestigious Innovative Threads travelling exhibition. After touring South Africa, this exhibition went to France in the beginning of 2002. The works can be viewed on the website www.inno.co.za. 

I exhibit regularly in Cape galleries and have also exhibited overseas in group shows at Christies in London as well as Axis Gallery in New York.

I have been selected a few times for the for the Vuleka competition, and won the first prize for my mixed media painting in the annual South African Society of Artists competition in 2003.

My paintings are to be found in private collections in America, Canada, England, Europe and Japan as well as in South Africa and Namibia. I accept commissions for portraits in pastels or oils as well as other, usually site specific, work.