In May of 2023 I and several artist friends traveled to Cape Town, South Africa a few days ahead of a 10-day art workshop we were taking through Workshops in SA.  The first few days of our adventure we did some private tours to stand at the southernmost tip of South Africa on Cape Agulhas where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet, ferry over to Robbens Island where Nelson Mandela was kept prisoner for 18 years of his life for fighting for what he believed in, rode the gondola to the top of Table Mountain, one of the seven wonders of the world, and took in a little bit of Cape Town and the Victoria Waterfront.  

 

From there we drove to Stellenbosch where we started our adventure hosted by Workshops in SA at a luxurious hotel called Lanzerac. Our rooms were almost decadent with a heated floor in our bathrooms. We each had our own patio off the back of our rooms that faced the vineyard and the incredible mountains behind.  After two nights of luxury we were off on a five hour drive to our first of three game reserves.  The landscape at each of the three game reserves was different. At the first we got to experience being hugged by elephants. It was like no other experience.  They would gently wrap their trunk around you.  Feeling the ridges and the tiny little hairs on their trunks was otherworldly. 

 

Throughout the rest of the 10-day workshop we traveled, painted, went on safari and enjoyed the excellent cuisine and wines.  Our instructor was Anna Rose Bain, a very talented and engaging artist who was 'full on' during our painting sessions. We painted the flowers of South Africa, the landscape and had the opportunity to paint several South African women, one of whom is featured in my painting "My Story of South Africa". Her name was Blessing and she was beautiful inside and out.  I had done a study of her while in South Africa but wanted to do a larger version and incorporate some favorite scenes from the stunning locations we had been.  I kind of like the way it turned out.

 

I returned home with over 1000 photo references and have been painting South Africa ever since. When you visit a place as special as South Africa  you want to preserve what you have seen and felt. Photographs can fade. Paintings do not. With the body of work I have thus far completed I hope that I have not only represented what I saw but also what I felt. 

 

Iceland is next on the travel agenda so come the end of October I will painting that experience!