HANIEN CONRADIE

Back in the studio

2011-07-18T09:25:00.001-07:00

Yes, it has been interesting to get back into the studio full time again! I have been drawing the human figure for the last year and a half and working as an interior architect, taking a break from painting full time.

Initially, my studio felt like a house that has been standing empty for a while. It took a whole week of messing around, cleaning the studio, dabbling with old paintings, looking through the last year's drawings done with Roxy's drawing group and looking at my white canvasses fearing that I can't paint anymore...

It reminds me of my afternoons staring at the waves, trying to convince myself that it is possible to ride those big ones : )

Getting back into it after being involved in different disciplines, is interesting. I have definitely changed a bit. Drawing makes one work in a more immediate manner, and this is what is happening on the canvass now. Drawing also teaches that you have one chance, one moment and it is what it is.

Mostly I am amazed to see the difference in the levels of joy, the appreciation and peace since I am back. I am grateful.

I am excited to see what is going to happen on the canvass and will keep you posted!

Ray Flowered Protea

2010-11-14T06:00:00.001-08:00

I encountered this Protea in Kirstenbosch Gardens early one August morning. It seemed completely unreal - a small, quiet universe radiating a mysterious light.

I imagined that this would be an easy painting to do. In the end I spent 3 months working on it, on and off.
I have found that in order to get the life into the work, I always need to spend this amount of time. It is a question of forgetting what I think I am looking at. By looking deeply at what it really is, I come into knowing this plant, intimately.

For me, this year has been a difficult one, but working with the Ray Flowered Protea has comforted me. In the stillness of its light, I found an eternal strenght.

THIS WORK IS ON EXHIBITION AT THE CASA LABIA GALLERY, MUIZENBERG FROM 16/11/2010

THIS WORK IS NOW SOLD 16/11/2010

Going Within

2010-03-17T02:25:00.001-07:00

Sometimes it is wonderful to change your perspective.

The deeper we go within, the closer we come to observing that eternal joy in the relationship between light and matter. Light continously giving of itself, touching everything in its path, and matter responding silently by bursting towards the light without reserve.

This is a silent neverending relationship that takes place on every scale in Life, also within us.

Moments of attachment

2010-03-16T03:52:00.000-07:00

Picasso said that when you fall in love with a certain part of the painting, paint over it. This comment annoyed me so much over the years, since in most cases it is true!

Often we fall in love with a spontaneous moment that has happened on the canvass. Then we are so caught in the beauty of it, that we get attached to it and it starts dominating every decision we make. Sometimes this area of painting becomes the only part that, in fact, does not work with the whole, but we are so attached that we stall. Our perspective of the whole becomes warped, and we greedily see only this moment of genius that has to be maintained at all costs.

I have some paintings in my studio that has stood there for more than a year now, and I just can't gather the courage to go ahead and paint over the under painting. There is something in it and I do not want to loose it.

This is a detail of a new work, I started yesterday. I had this lovely blue canvass for a year now. I painted the background over and over mainly with precious cobalt blue pigment, and then the expense and beauty of this background overwhelmed me. I just did not know where to start.

It seems that the arrival of the new creative cycle with the new moon has pushed me. A feeling of just biting on your teeth and pushing forward over what you have loved for so long, in order to keep moving, and to keep expanding into the whole. Knowing that you risk to never see that beautiful pristine background again, but maybe it will bring you someplace new.

Sovereignity

2010-03-15T02:57:00.000-07:00

In the 'freedance' paintings I simply work with whatever comes up as I paint. This is a way to connect with what it is I would really like to express, but also to let go of all that has become obligation and where I am loosing the excitement and joy with my work. I use different mediums, projected images, paint over old images or just drift with my brush across an empty canvass.
This week some womb like images came up. It left me contemplating babies as they are forming in the womb. This too is a kind of growth that happens in silence. I could see how each baby I looked at already had a unique essence even just after birth. It is as if an embryo is a type of seed.

To become Sovereign within ourselves we have to surrender back into this silent seed essence and grow into the tree we are. We need strong roots, a thick trunk and we have a wonderful head of flexible branches and whispering leaves in the sky. So we each have to become a tree that can stand alone and simply be.

I encountered this queen just before spring in the Luxembourg Gardens, Paris. She was silent and static amid the branches, quietly bursting with newly formed buds.
All these works in the picture are still in progress.

Rest

2010-03-12T01:48:00.000-08:00

If we can shed all that we are not, if we can surrender into simply being what we are, we can start shining from within - beaming out the unique light we were created to shine in this life. It is in our distraction with what others are doing, in the distraction of the noise around us, that we forget our uniqueness, that we forget to be in full acceptance of what we are.

I am now at the stage where the work will rest for a week or so. Sometimes I know the painting is not done yet, although it seems to me that it is done. So I take photos of the work like this one taken in my backyard and then I hide the painting for a few days.

I know when I look at it again, my perspective will be fresh, and I will know what it needs to complete the work.

In the meantime I am working on a few 'freedance' works : ) Painting without references, I simply paint whatever comes up -

Silence

2010-03-05T00:12:00.000-08:00

At the last stage of a painting I find myself going into the phase where one has to 'charge' the painting with the last touches, almost like blowing life force into the work.

This requires moving into a great silence.

This is so different to the fire quality at the beginning of a painting, where it is physically more active, the smell of paint is stronger and usually I breathe fast and the focus is great.

This last phase is more like the sound in between drops of water falling into a still secluded pond. My brush is small, I work with micro puddles of paint, with great subtlety in colour and mark (that I believe only I can see!).

Sometimes I even sit down and paint. Now the painting receives my piercing attention on every square inch, and the whole image quiets down.

This is the Silence that is there as we move and rush around living life. The Silence that is patiently always there waiting for us to come into surrender, to sit with It and to remember that we dwell in the Ultimate.

I see this Silence in the unobserved activities of plants.

Perfect Imperfection

2010-03-01T04:02:00.000-08:00

Contemplating further on the imperfections, within seemingly perfect structural manifestations in nature, I am understading that accepting my own darkness, accepting and loving that which seems unacceptable, brings me closer to the surrender of simply being who I am, and within that finding the unique beauty (specifically with its blemishes) that makes up each one of us, as we are splinter-aspects of one creator.

It is then through working with a sticky medium such as oil and liquin that I am forced to be less exact and to allow the mess to happen, allow the accidents and the imperfect moments to be on the canvass, those moments where we lose control, are the moments of true surrender, where we can start seeing the vastness of who we are.

Questions

2010-02-22T00:14:00.000-08:00

As is always the case : ), I have experienced such bliss with the process of engaging with this work, with the paint, with a new painters medium and the client is happy with the work. And it has a quality that I enjoy. And then, after a week end of engaging with performance artists and academics, my ego steps in...

Now I want to know, why am I painting these plants? Now I wonder again, why is it that I am choosing to explore this side of life - plants and not people? Have I been refusing to really engage in society and in community?

Protea grandiceps [Entrance] 850x850mm - oil on canvass

I have tried to express my fear, my darkness in some of these works, but again and again, I am brought back to the process of growth that happens silently while we are living our fast paced lives, to this feeling that there is a structure hidden here in the seeming chaos - it is a feeling that makes me want to laugh at just how seriously we tend to take ourselves. It is as if these plants are in a surrender that allows life to simply happen through them, there is a trust in the intelligence of their cells to create the plant they will become.

Joy of Being

2010-01-21T04:42:00.000-08:00

A new commission to start of this new year. What a blessing this work is.
Today I spent the morning in Kirstenbosch Gardens and started painting only at lunch time.

Something in this painting feels like it is a magical place, a city, something mysterious. This interests me. This makes me just flow with the work, helps me to connect with the mystery that is this plant.

I feel happy with how the painting is coming on, especially because I can feel that I am touching that special place now - the place of wonder, of the magnificence and ridiculously bright, shameless joy of nature.