INTRODUCTION

AS ARTISTS GO I suppose I'm a late developer .I didn't so much as take up a brush till I was 24. Perhaps that was because I grew up in Namibia, or South West Africa as it was then. In the whole country there was only one school that took art teaching at all seriously, and I wasn't attending it. But perhaps I should start at the beginning.

I was born Mariana Geldenhuys at Riversdale in South Africa's Cape Province in 1960, the third of my parents four children. Both my parents were teachers, but at that time we were living on a farm and only my father was teaching while my mother looked after the family. When I was still very small I had an accident with scissors and lost the sight of my right eye. When I was nearly six the family moved to South West Africa.

All through my school years, I had virtually no exposure to art. The only picture in our home was a Tretchikoff, and we didn't know any artists or anyone remotely concerned with the art world. I suppose my parents just weren't interested. All the same,I myself was always busy with something creative. I designed clothes for my dolls and made them myself, and I loved singing and drama and all that they entailed.

Right from the beginning I realized I'd never have money to buy special materials for what I did, so would need to use imagination. With my dolls' clothes I always made use of remnants and cast-offs.(To this day you can see the same principle at work in my cooking, where I never follow recipes but instead concoct something from whatever I have to hand.) Later in life I made up a saying to explain my thrifty outlook, and it's become a watchword to live by: "In God's hand, my "little" can become much!"

HOMEMAKING

FROM THE TIME I was still quite young the one thing I looked forward to was becoming a mother. At high school in Windhoek I specialized in home economics, and when it was decided I would move on to university I felt I would continue on the same path. I enrolled at Potchefstroom University in the Transvaal, the first time I'd been away from my family .I thoroughly enjoyed the chance to learn about things like design and interior decorating and the chance to work with colour.

My studies were going well but in my second year I got married and fell pregnant, so had to drop out of university and stay home. I didn't mind too much, and there was always the chance I could resume studying when money allowed. As it turned out, I never did go back .I concentrated on homemaking and building a family, but I did begin dabbling in a little drawing and painting just for fun.

One day a friend of my husband's brought his wife around, and she was a commercial artist - the first person I'd ever met who made a career from art.It was quite an eye-opener.Id always thought that artists needed to be 100 per sent on top of their work from the word go, but our friend's wife explained that becoming an artist involved a lot of study and practice.

In her spare time the commercial artist was taking lessons at a art school in Potch. She saw my paintings and said she thought I had a bit of talent and should consider joining in. So it was then I enrolled at the school to study Water-colour under a tutor called Barend Grobbelaar, who I came to realize was a purist. He was determined to stay within the traditions of English water-colour where there's no room for gimmicks or cheating.

EXHIBITIONS

I WAS GOING to art school once a week for a two-hour lesson. In time I won a bursary for figure studies. Then I had to give up on the classes for a couple of years, because of the the complications of a separation and divorce. When I went back to the art school I again won a bursary, and returned to drawing and water-colour. At no point was I exposed to oils. During that period I contributed work to various group exhibitions in and around Potchefstroom. I'd got married again, and was working to build up a portfolio. In the meantime my parents had moved to Bethulie in the southern Free State and I had my First-ever solo exhibition - in the Bethulie Public Library. The paintings I showed were old work that hadn't sold in earlier group exhibitions, but they introduced me to a whole new public. Around this time my second marriage was going sour in its turn, chiefly because we had serious debt. The bailiff was at the door. A fellow artist took a folder containing about 40 of my water-colour's, saying she was taking them in payment for money we owed her. I heard later that she'd sold them to various corporations including Clover SA and Matertreads, where they'd been well received. That was a bit of consolation, but for a while she stopped me in my tracks.

INVITATION

I DIDN'T PAINT for nearly two years, a period that brought me constant trouble. Eventually I left my husband in Klerksdorp and went back to Potch to try and survive and make a home for my kids. I was doing anything and everything I could to make ends meet - at times, merely for a room to live in. Not least, I started giving classes in art therapy, a way of getting troubled people to communicate by expressing themselves through art. When I began painting again, it was on the invitation of four fellow artists I knew in Potch. They were having a group exhibition and invited me to take part. Right up till a week before the opening I had nothing to contribute and the other women urged me to pull out. Instead of agreeing I told myself it was something I had to do, and in that last week I painted day and night and completed five works - two drawings and three oils. It was the first time I'd tried painting in oils, and the reason was economic. Not only was the actual paint cheaper but also there was no need to frame the finished work, whereas water-colour always needs frames with glass. Not much sold, but at least I was continuing to support the family with the proceeds from the art therapy.

Shortly after that I decided to move to Bethulie where I could live with my parents and make a home for my three kids. It seemed perfect, and on top of that I met well-known artists like Hilton Nel and Walter Meyer who were already established in Bethulie. They encouraged me to paint, and in time I was able to move my family into a place of our own - a lovely old house with lots of character and an outstanding garden that had recently featured in magazines.

That's where I am today. I paint both oils and water-colour's, sometimes on spec and sometimes on commission. At times I break out and paint giant murals in partnership with another of my artist friends in Bethulie, Christenette Coetzee. All the time I find I'm growing both in myself and as an artist, and as my kids grow bigger I find my work is maturing. I feel Quietly confident that the best is yet to come.

written by: Tony Hocking