South African Artist - Nico Phooko

Nico Phooko, South African artist, temps us with his visual mastery and command of a melody of sounds, witch colorfully leap’s at us off the canvas. He exploits various mediums including collage, acrylics oils, inks, and found objects.

Nico Phooko was inspired as a teenager by the works of prominent artists in his hometown. Nico took to art not only as a hobby by a noble career to flourish and nourish and upon an arty advice, he enrolled at the Bill Ainsle Found Private art College the Johannesburg Art Foundation where he studied for Graphic Design basics and a three year fine art Diploma course.

Nico Phooko's commitment for the sustenance of African values, ethics and re-induction of meaningful traditional ways of life is evident in his approach to technique, he sometimes collage found objects with rusted nails, cow dung, grass, Hessian and an assortment of natural pigments .His use of rich and natural colors sing a grasping and flexible piece of music that remind us of a time and space known but not to date.

"My works spring from my passion for music, the politics of challenging the lampooning the power of ancestral feasts that have been a part of my mother’s family life, the sensations of romantic engagements and the solace of domestic and social love, peace and harmony. There are mysterious forces that prompt us all to found relief in music, the very powerful strength that accelerates the confidence of accepting that we are what we are because of the incomparable and the ordinary people who saw the earth prior to our life form. The ones who’s strength of mind will always have a special place in our lives. In view of the fact that we are not the end of human evolution. We are for that reason indebted to pass on to future generations’ sound aspirations of loving our immediate families, be in awe of our friends and value our neighbors and communities as a general rule”.

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South African Artist - Martin Osner

South African artist Martin Osner has a natural artistic curiosity for the world he inhabits, a fact that logically steered him towards photography at an early age. Born in Johannesburg, South Africa (1963), he opened his first photographic studio in Johannesburg in 1981 - establishing a solid reputation as a commercial photographer. Later he moved to Pretoria with his wife, Anita, and their three children, where 1993 he co-founded the National College of Photography. Over a decade the college has grown into one of Southern Africas premier training institutions, where he continues to lecture.

Osner eschews pure registration photography, favouring a more expressive vision that accords with both his visual understanding and spiritual appreciation of the world. A multi award winning artist, his photography, generally, is characterised by an urge to explore with the willingness to experiment. He considers anything a subject stating that "things just look interesting when photographed".

Rather than clutter his images with detail, he prefers to concentrate on elemental forms, patterns and shapes. Abstraction, paired with a necessary sense of restraint, bears out Osner's belief that simplicity is the cornerstone of a successful image.

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South African Artist - Val Odendaal

South African artist Edgar Valentine Odendaal (known as 'Val') has a God-given talent for art. He was born in 1944 in Nairobi and grew up in the wildlife paradise of the Kenyan bushveld. From an early age he loved painting and drawing the animals, bushveld and scenes around him. This evoked in him a life-long passion for art and for capturing the beauty which surrounded him.

His artistic ability was evident from his earliest schooldays and he remembers the school art teacher entrusting him with the artroom keys so that he had free access to the facility whenever he wished. A large portion of his school holidays was spent on the old type safari, camping out in the bush with his parents and family. He gained a wealth of knowledge of the outdoors from these experiences, as well as from his father, who was a farmer, professional hunter and later a game warden at the Queen Elizabeth Park in Uganda. This knowledge combined with his inborn talent for painting and sketching has resulted in the exciting, authentic wildlife and nature studies that he now produces.

Val Odendaal is a self-taught artist with no formal art training. He has, however, developed his God-given gift to its present level. He started painting professionally in 1982 and uses various mediums; his favourite being oils. Accuracy and attention to detail are hallmarks of Val Odendaal's work.

Val Odendaal and his wife Ethne live, at present, in the Mpumalanga Lowveld of South Africa, close to the Kruger National Park and many of the private nature reserves in the area. The sounds of the bushveld and seeing the African sunrise over the thorn trees every morning inspire him to continue with this passion.

His work is known locally and internationally and his paintings are now widely collected throughout the world. They are to be seen in diplomatic offices, corporate and company boardrooms as well as in game lodges and private homes.

All Val Odendaal's artworks are framed by the artist himself. He carefully selects the frame and mountings to suit each study and to display it to its maximum potential. He derives a deep satisfaction from seeing the creation through from its inception to its completion.

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South African Artist

South African artist Michèle Nigrini obtained her B.A Fine Art at the University of Pretoria under Prof. N.O. Roos and other artists like Jean Kotze, Gunther van der Reiss, John Clarke and Judith Mason. She undertook postgraduate study at the same university and obtained her Master’s degree (Fine Arts) in 1994.

Michèle Nigrini's approach is based on visual sensations and the theme is just the vehicle for the interaction of line, form, mark and texture with colour as the most important element for optic and psychological impact.

Michèle Nigrini uses space and scale as well as an unconventional arrangement of everyday objects to alter their predictability - as colors change when placed next to each other, the theme of a work depends on the way that the objects are grouped or sized.
Michèle believes that art is a medium for the elevation of the spirit, yet remains rooted in the experience of everyday life.

For years this Pretoria-born artist has been known for her portrayal of the urban gardenscape as the main theme of her work.

Since 1996 however, Michèle Nigrini also explored the still life theme where she arranged objects such as fruit and vegetables or flower pots with garden structures and picket fences.
1998 saw a transition to only fruit and vegetables as primary subject matter, but simultaneously she started deconstructing and abstracting these well- known forms, placing it within a more surreal context – working with scale and pushing the limits of the canvas by creating giant sized cut-outs.

2002 and her exhibition “Household stories” presented images of her own surroundings receiving sustenance from the environment she lived in. Household objects, indigenous plants, trees, stones, hedges, grass, birds and even the odd image of a fish or wind mill. She explored the possibilities of a space, on the one hand descriptive of tangible objects and on the other hand pictorially intangible, or flat. The individual parts studied from life, the totality, imagined - her aim not to copy nature, but to re-interpret it.

“They are objects which we normally take for granted, but the extent to which we take these everyday objects for granted, is the precise extent to which they govern and inform our lives - representing the logos of a culture and recording its life history.”
After relocating from Pretoria to the small Eastern Free State village, Rosendal, in January 2004, the focus of Michèle Nigrini's work changed toward the landscape and the varied structures within it.

“The beautiful surroundings excite and inspire the imagination but although I interpret nature, I strive to express the essential character of things, submitting it to the spirit of the place... A condensation of sensation, so to speak.”

The eventual context and meaning of the work is a “happy accident” and Michèle Nigrini wants the viewer to interpret the work according to his or her own imagination and frame of reference.
Michèle Nigrini makes the frame part of the painting by incorporating it with the canvas, thus negating the frame as the artwork’s boundary with nothing to draw attention away from the work. Michèle believes that art is a medium for the elevation of the spirit, yet remains rooted in the experience of everyday life.

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South African Artist Daniel Mosako

South African artist Daniel Mosako:

"My work of art is a visual recording of architecture and infrastructures existing in my immediate environment. I depict these constructions so that they are exposed to the audience for evaluation and approval and be finally adopted as part of the surrounding.
Metaphorically, these paintings relate to the tribal craft design of geometrical beadwork, i.e. circular, triangular, rectangular and square African designs and patterns. The decorative colours on these contemporary buildings bear reference to the mural decorations of the traditional African heritage.

I have often used hazy colours as an attempt to symbolize the Africans' life and social circumstances, i.e. the social and political confusion that many black South Africans are confronted with. In addition, figuratively, the congestions that appear in my paintings are done in an attempt to express some factors regarding a population explosion in some parts of the industrial South Africa, especially the metropolitan areas of Johannesburg.

As a fellow South African, I find black labourers to be helpless and dominated by the big structures in the concrete and steel worlds. These are the imbalances and living conditions in a capitalist society: that is, first world individuals vs third world individuals; plastic and corrugated shacks against ideal city glass-towers and luxury hotels. As a result, most of my paintings reflect a contradiction between a silent landscape and juxtaposed industrial tools such as cranes and heavy duty trucks."

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