And the tree asks, "Why am I here?"

Winsor&Newton watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm 

Every branch shaking, shifting, and falling in the icy wind,
A tiny leaf at the very end holds strong,
Why am I here, questioning wondering waiting, for that final pulse that will blow him down?
But in that tree was a force, a force of life, a force of strength, a force unmatched by the icy wind.
That tree was a young tree, a tree that never crossed roots with wild bushes,
Bore fruits desired by many, tasted by few and discarded by the very planter,
Questioning why am I here, questioning is this the only way,
Now the broken branch begins to fall, now this tree was not very tall,
No other tree was like this tree, this tree was special,
This tree was bearing the strain of an icy wind,
Just as the branch had hit the ground there was silence all around a calm in the drifting storm
Now this was rare, a tree this young, a tree this strange, a neglected tree, a tree with shallow roots, a tree with hollow bark had survived the storm.
Questioning why me?
This tree was a lonely tree,
this tree knew he would grow strong,
weak body strong thoughts kept the tree unmoved on broken paths.
^{Extract from “A tree” – Emmanuel Mohanlall}

Autumn - wonderful time of the year!

A small W&N watercolour in Moleskine 200gsm watercolour sketch-book

Autumn (fall) in South Africa (mid-February to April) offers the best weather of the year. Very little rain falls over the whole country, and it is warm but not too hot, getting colder as the season progresses. In Gauteng, autumn is fantastic, with hot sunny days, blue skies and warm, balmy nights.

View across the road

W&N watercolour on DalerRowney 220gsm heavy-duty sketching paper - unframed

I open my eyes and see the world in a new light. I view everything as if I were a child seeing a freshly opened flower for the first time. 

The view across the road from my studio – I stare at this every day, and every day I am amazed at the different play of colours on the landscape….

ITEM ID : ViewAcrossTheRoad
PRICE - R350.00 including postage

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Gentle Giant (SOLD)

“Keep five yards from a carriage, ten yards from a horse, and a hundred yards from an elephant; but the distance one should keep from a wicked man cannot be measured.”
- Indian Proverb

Acrylic on Acrylic Gesso primed un-stretched acrylic canvas sheet 12" x 8" - SOLD

With a height of just over 3 - 4m (measured at the shoulder), a length of between 6 to 7.5m (that's the length of an average motor car garage!) and weighing in at 6 tonnes, these mostly gentle giants of the African bush are highly intelligent with a strong sense of family and herd, and a complex social structure.

Elephants are incredibly social animals: they form strong, long-lasting bonds within their herd. They adopt orphaned calves, help injured elephants and work together. They have surprisingly complicated behavioural patterns and interactions. An injured member may be helped to its feet and supported by other herd members: if it is badly wounded, it may be vigorously defended by the herd, with even the calves taking part. Although elephants are normally peaceful individuals, they can be aggressive and extremely dangerous, especially if they are sick or injured. Females in groups with young are particularly unpredictable, as are males in musth.

Here in Africa they are native to a wide variety of habitats including semi-desert scrub, open savannas and dense forest regions. Besides its greater size, it differs from the Asian elephant in having larger ears and tusks, a sloping forehead, and two “fingers” at the tip of its trunk, compared to only one in the Asian species.

For this sketch, I looked at many different photographs from a great many angles, and developed this stance from all the 'information' I had gathered in my mind.

ITEM ID : GentleGiantAcrylic

PRICE - ORIGINAL SOLD

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Unusual Winter in South Africa

Softly the evening came. The sun from the western horizon like a magician extended his golden want o'er the landscape; tinkling vapours arose; and sky and water and forest seemed all on fire at the touch, and melted and mingled together.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

This was done from my imagination, no preliminary sketching - 
W&N watercolours on Arches 300gsm - 10" x 7" - unframed

A couple of years ago, in August 2006, South Africa was struck by an unusual phenomena, snow! It is something we rarely experience and it therefore always creates great excitement as well as hard-ship. Especially in the farming community, as livestock is always at risk because of the vast sizes of our farms and the large numbers of livestock we farm with - no barns really big enough to house all of them. No protection against the freezing temperatures and also a great problem with feed supplies. Luckily, people like us on smallholdings (8.5ha, which is 10 morgen or 21 acres), have fewer animals, making winter much more manageable, but still not worry-free.

ITEM ID : UnusualWinter
PRICE - R350.00 including postage IN SOUTH AFRICA

Daisies from my garden

"Earth laughs in flowers!"

~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Hamatreya"

"Daisies from my garden" - watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm - Maree©
Size - 11" x 15" unframed

When it's freezing outside and threatening to rain any minute, and I can't make a field trip to do some sketching, I always turn to my garden for inspiration. Even under the most dismal conditions there is always something to be found - some flower left-over, a few Autumn leaves clinging to a branch or the birds and insects who seem to cheerily carry on, no matter what the weather.

Inspiration taken from my garden - the Shasta daisies are now long overdue on trimming and rather tall and lanky, but they make an ideal study for a quick sketch on a cold and windy day.

ITEM ID : DaisiesGarden

PRICE : R350.00 including postage in South Africa

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Beach Fantasy

I am forever walking upon these shores,

Betwixt the sand and the foam,

The high tide will erase my foot-prints,

And the wind will blow away the foam.

But the sea and the shore will remain

Forever.

- Kahlil Gibran

Beach Fantasy - watercolour on X-pressit 300gsm - Maree©
Size : 12" x 8" unframed

When one is longing for the beach and not able to get there for another few weeks, the next best thing to do is to sketch it! This one is done from memory of the time I spent at St. Lucia, up the North Coast of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.

ITEM ID : BeachFantasy

PRICE - R350.00 including postage in South Africa

Breakfast is served! - SOLD

robins | worm-hunting | in the snow

A Twitter poem from WATERMARK

"Breakfast" pencil sketch and watercolour on Visual 140gsm - Maree©
Size : 11.5" x 8" - unframed - SOLD

This little chap was giving me the beady eye while I was sketching him, waiting for me to disappear so he could feed his young - aren't people just a nuisance?

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First Light (SOLD)

early dawn | two-note, two note | who are you?

A Twitter poem from WATERMARK

"First Light" - Acrylic on Canvas - Maree©
Size : 12" x 9" unframed - SOLD

Sunrise or sunset in the Kalahari Desert in the Cape Province of South Africa is always a spectacular affair. Here I have tried to capture the mystery of the desert as the sun rises over a landscape of golden grass and small red dunes.

The name Kalahari is derived from the Tswana word Kgala, meaning "the great thirst", or Khalagari, Kgalagadi or Kalagare, meaning "a waterless place". The Kalahari desert is part of the huge sand basin that extends some 900 000 square kilometers from the Orange River up to Angola, in the west to Namibia and in the east to Zimbabwe. The sand masses were created by the erosion of soft stone formations. The wind shaped the sand ridges, which are so typical of the landscape in the Kalahari.

In the southern Kalahari desert, which is the driest part, the Kalahari desert takes the form of a stationary dune veld. To the East and to the North of this, the Kalahari desert becomes a flat park-like terrain or savannah.

The Kalahari is not a true desert as it receives too much rain, but is actually a fossil desert.

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Tarlton stream at sunrise

“An ant may well destroy a whole dam.”

- Chinese Proverbs

"Tarlton stream at sunrise" - watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm - Maree©
Size : 12" x 8"

Tarlton and surrounds in Gauteng, South Africa, offers a wide variety of landscapes for the artist to sketch - from flat Savannah to rolling hills covered in indigenous trees and tracts of Blue Gum forests planted originally for the mining industry to flower, vegetable, cattle and ostrich farms. I managed to capture the sunrise on yesterday morning (yes, I was out there at 5am! doing a rough sketch and finishing it off once I got home).

This stream in Tarlton was once again flowing after the vast amounts of rain we've been having, but with no hope of filling the dam as it disappeared through the broken dam wall.

ITEM ID : SunriseTarlton1

Tarlton Stream

“To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life flowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future.”
- Bertrand Russell

Tarlton Stream - watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm - Maree©
Size - 12" x 9"

The little stream feeding the Tarlton Dam has been dry for years, but after the recent good rains we have had, it is once again flowing, rushing forward as if looking forward to its destination. Sadly, the dam will not fill up this time, as someone thought it wise to break the dam wall down and allow the water to flow into nowhere, drying up quickly as the feed slows down. It is sad that a part of Tarlton's landscape is forever changed through this action and soon it will be nothing but a dry watercourse again.

ITEM ID : TarltonStream

Africa's Wonder

"Let a Person Walk Alone With Few Wishes, Committing No Wrong, Like an Elephant in the Forest"

"Africa's Wonder - Elephant" - watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm - Maree©
Size : 12" x 9"

I sketched this young elephant at the Elephant Sanctuary Hartebeespoort Dam, where they provide a “halfway house” for young African elephants in need of a temporary home.

African elephants are bigger than Asian Elephants. Males stand 3.6 m (12 ft) tall at the shoulder and weigh 5,400 kg (12,000 lb), while females stand 3 m (9.8 ft) and weigh between 3,600 and 4,600 kg (7,900 and 10,000 lb). However, males can get as big as 6,800 kg (15,000 lb!).

Some interesting info :
Elephants have four molars; each weighs about 5 kg (11 lb) and measures about 30 cm (12 in) long. As the front pair wears down and drops out in pieces, the back pair shifts forward and two new molars emerge in the back of the mouth. Elephants replace their teeth six times. At about 40 to 60 years of age the elephant no longer has teeth and will likely die of starvation, a common cause of death.

ITEM ID : AfricaElephant1