Why the environment has to be preserved

Every time I have some moment on a seashore, or in the mountains, or sometimes in a quiet forest, I think this is why the environment has to be preserved.

- Bill Bradley

Done from my imagination, no preliminary sketching - W&N watercolours on Bockingford 300gsm - 12" x 8" - unframed

We're still having a lot of rain here in Tarlton, Gauteng, South Africa, and my palette is definitely being affected by this - I'm drawn to all the wet and cool colours as we haven't being seeing much of the sun at all. Our dams are filled to capacity, rivers are swollen and causing flooding and, of course, the gardens are smiling!

I'm not sure whether us humans are all to blame for 'global warming' and the strange weather patterns, because Mother Earth has her own natural cycles of warming and freezing, but the mess that us humans make on this planet is of major concern to me. Isn't a beautiful landscape enough incentive for each and every one of us to take responsibility for our mess in order to preserve it....?

ITEM ID : EnvironmentPreserved
PRICE - R350.00 including postage in South Africa

A Farmhouse somewhere in the Karoo

I had to live in the desert before I could understand the full value of grass in a green ditch.

- Ella Maillart

W&N watercolours on Bockingford 300gsm - 12" x 8"

'n Plaashuisie êrens in die Karoo.

The Karoo (a Khoisan word of uncertain etymology) is a semi-desert region of South Africa. It has two main sub-regions - the Great Karoo in the north and the Little Karoo in the south.
The Great Karoo has an area of more than 400,000 square kilometers. From a geological point of view it has been a vast inland basin for most of the past 250 million years. At one stage the area was glaciated and the evidence for this is found in the widely-distributed Dwyka tillite. Later, at various times, there were great inland deltas, seas, lakes or swamps. Enormous deposits of coal formed and these are one of the pillars of the economy of South Africa today. Volcanic activity took place on a titanic scale. Despite this baptism of fire, ancient reptiles and amphibians prospered in the wet forests and their remains have made the Karoo famous amongst palaeontologists.

Western people first settled in the Cape in 1652, but made almost no inroads into the Karoo prior to about 1800. Before that time, large herds of antelope, zebra and other large game roamed the grassy flats of the region. The Khoi and Bushmen, last of the southern African Stone Age peoples, wandered far and wide. There were no Europeans and no Africans of Bantu extraction.
Info from "Wikipedia":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoo>

ITEM ID : FarmhouseKaroo
PRICE - R350.00 including postage in South Africa

Come walk with me

W&N watercolours on Bockingford 300gsm - 8" x 12" - unframed

"Are you feeling, feeling, feeling like I'm feeling
Like I'm floating, floating, up above that big blue ocean
Sand beneath our feet, big blue sky above our heads,
No need to keep stressing from our everyday life on our minds
We have got to leave all that behind.
- The Avett brothers

ITEM ID : ComeWalkWithMe
PRICE - R350.00 including postage in South Africa

Winter setting in

“People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.”
- Anton Chekhov

"Winter Setting In" - watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm - Maree©
Size - 11" x 8" unframed

Although the lawn in my garden is still thick and green from all the rain we've had, the veld and roadside is starting to show the effects of Winter - all the Cosmos is gone and the tall thatching grass is yellow and dry, just waiting for the first careless cigarette to be flicked out of a car window - this Black Wattle tree still hasn't recovered from the ravages of last year's fires and got a second dose when the property owner did his fire-break this week. Pity, but fire-breaks are a necessary evil if we are going to be protecting our properties from these, sometimes dangerous, fires.

ITEM ID : WinterSettingIn
PRICE - R850.00 including postage in South Africa

Autumn in Tarlton - Commission (SOLD)

“Winter is an etching, spring a watercolour, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.”
- Stanley Horowitz

"Autumn in Tarlton"

This painting was a commission from a friend to do another painting of her garden after I did a small sketch of her garden "Autumn setting in" (which you can see in the previous post). It was my first commission for years and I was scared out of my wits that she wouldn't like it, but luckily she was absolutely thrilled!

The original is watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm - 30" x 18" - (SOLD)

Buy a Framed Print, Poster or Greeting card - click below :

Framed print for sale on RedBubble

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Autumn setting in (SOLD)

“Autumn, the year's last, loveliest smile.”

- William Cullen Bryant

Autumn Setting in - this is a small watercolour on 200gsm -

8" x 5.5" - SOLD - Maree©

Autumn is in full swing and the trees in my garden were slowly starting to change colour last month - this is actually a friend's garden on their plot here in Tarlton, South Africa, and I just had to capture her Japanese Maple in all its glorious orange splendour amongst her mostly indigenous trees. She commented that she never knew her garden was so beautiful and that she will be looking at it differently now!

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Daisies for Mother's Day - 9th May 2010

'Tis my faith that every flower

Enjoys the air it breathes!

~William Wordsworth, "Lines Written in Early Spring," Lyrical Ballads, 1798

I did this sketch of some Asters in my garden last month - these Shasta daisies are real die-hards and sometimes carry on right through winter, but require quite a lot of work dead-heading or else they can really look messy.

I received a wonderful Mother's Day card from my daughter in Ballito (on the North Coast of KwaZulu Natal, S.A.), but no flowers this year! so I picked a bunch of these Shastas for the kitchen table for myself and they looked quite perky in my white enamel jug!

This is watercolour done on Moleskine 200gsm - 8" x 5.5" - NOT FOR SALE

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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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African Storm Brewing

"Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather."

- John Ruskin

"African Storm" - watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm - Maree©

Size - 11" x 7.5" unframed

It's already April, way past our rainy season, and on one of our recent trips to Harties (Schoemansville), I captured this Autumn storm brewing over a farm on the banks of the Crocodile River, which flows through Broederstroom on it's way to Hartebeespoort Dam in the North-West Province of South Africa.

When a storm is brewing (in your mind or in your life), embrace it as just another delicious experience, like a summer shower. See what you can learn from it, take a lesson from it, because soon the clouds will have a silver lining again as the sunshine bursts through. Nothing lasts forever - not the rain, not the sunshine, not the storm - so might as well accept it into our lives as just another "bad weather" phenomena.

ITEM ID : AfricanStorm

PRICE - R350.00 including postage in South Africa

Black Wattles in Tarlton - SOLD

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Black Wattles in Tarlton" - watercolour on Moleskine 200gsm - Maree©
Size - 12" x 8" unframed - SOLD

The Black Wattle trees on our smallholding in Tarlton, Gauteng, South Africa, which we are trying our utmost to eradicate, have put up the most spectacular show of browns with their millions of seed-pods in between the greens. How can we even begin to think to destroy such beauty? Yet, for the survival of our own indigenous flora, it is a task we undertake every year in a bid to save some of our own natural growth.

Read more about the Black Wattle struggle HERE.

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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

At the edge of the Quarry - SOLD

Life is like a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.
- Samuel Butler


"At the edge of the quarry" - watercolour on Moleskine 200gsm - Maree©
Size : 12" x 6" unframed - SOLD


About 2km from us is the Tarlton Brickyard - hectares of ground that have been dug up and soil removed for the making of bricks, leaving the earth pitted with deep holes and piles of heaped ground and smoking kilns where the bricks are being baked.

Some might say it's an eye-sore or a scar on Mother Earth's crust, and I could agree, but besides providing the building industry with the necessary raw materials for our housing needs, this quarry provides endless hours of pleasure to off-road motorbike enthusiasts who race along the holes and over steep mounds of earth, flying through the air like movie stunt men! Horse riders also like to visit, putting their steeds through their paces, using it as a cross-country course. Not all's bad that seems bad!


A brick-making kiln in the Eastern Cape, South Africa

ITEM ID : Quarry1
PRICE - R850.00 including postage

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"Keep Out!" - SOLD

"Creativity occurs in the moment, and in the moment we are timeless."

- Julia Cameron

"Keep Out! - watercolour in Moleskine Folio 200gsm - Maree©
Size : - 12"x 8" unframed - SOLD

This farm gate scene is not far from us in Broederstroom, a farm bordering on the Crocodile river, on our way to Hartebeespoort Dam. We stopped to give our puppy a chance to go to the toilet and I was faced with this wonderful gate right in from of me! To hubby's utmost frustration, I actually hauled out my paint set, collected water from the river and quickly started doing the sketch. The frustration was because it took a bit longer than normal, actually putting in the colour right there - normally I would do a preliminary sketch and finish it off at home - this took me just over half an hour, while Dave and Jacko explored just inside the fence, but we were soon on our way and I fiddled a bit when we got home.

Buy as a Framed Print, Poster or Greeting Card

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Winter Scene

“Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat.”

Winter in Tarlton - watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm - Maree©
Size : 12" x 8" unframed

Winter in Gauteng, South Africa, brings raging veld fires, lands that lie fallow on farms and, in certain areas like Tarlton, frost that wipes clean any memory of green, except for the evergreen Black Wattle trees, which put up a spectacular show of brown seed pods, brightening up an otherwise bleak landscape.

ITEM ID : WinterTarlton

PRICE - R350.00 including postage

Frame suggestion

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Spring Scene

Spring makes its own statement, so loud and clear that the gardener seems to be only one of the instruments, not the composer.

~Geoffrey B. Charlesworth

Spring scene - watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm - Maree©
Size : 12" x 8" unframed

Spring holds a special place in my heart - the sight of the first tiny green buds on a tree is like magic unfolding after months of bleak landscapes and an earth blackened by raging veld fires.

ITEM ID : SpringScene

PRICE - R850.00 including postage in South Africa

Summer Scene

“A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken.”

- James Dent

Summer Scene - watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm - Maree©
Size " 12" x 8" unframed

Summer - a time of activity - tending to the garden, going out on picnics, going to the beach, fishing or perhaps taking your sail boat out on the lake. And of course, here in South Africa, celebrating a hot and snowless Christmas!

ITEM ID : SummerScene

PRICE - R350.00 including postage in South Africa

Trees on the beach

As artists, we must learn to be self nourishing. We must become alert enough to consciously replenish our creative resources as we draw on them – to restock the trout pond, so to speak.

- Julia Cameron

"Beach and trees" - Watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm - Maree©
Size : 10" x 7" unframed

ITEM ID : BeachTrees

PRICE - R350.00 including postage in South Africa

Magaliesberg Mountain landscape

“You can never conquer the mountain. You can only conquer yourself.”

- James Whittaker

"Magaliesberg mountain landscape" - watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm - Maree©
Size - 12" x 8" unframed

For this wet-on-wet scene, after wetting the paper, I sketched the main outlines of my scene using my Rigger and Cerulean Blue. I'm sure many artists use this technique, but I've always been somewhat of a sketchy person, using my pencil, going into great detail with a lot of erasing happening. It's only been the past couple of months since I started practicing painting with no sketching beforehand that I feel confident enough to consider doing this.

ITEM ID : MagaliesbergMountainLandscape

PRICE - R350.00 including postage in South Africa

Magaliesberg Mountains 2

“Winners take time to relish their work, knowing that scaling the mountain is what makes the view from the top so exhilarating.”

- Denis Waitley

"Magaliesberg Mountains" - watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm - Maree©
Size : 15" x 11" unframed

Virtually all over the West Rand (Gauteng, South Africa) the Magaliesberg mountains are visible for miles around.

The Magaliesberg is a mountain range that stretches for over 120 kilometres, extending from Pretoria in the north of the Gauteng Province to a point south of Pilanesberg, in the North West Province, and the Bronkhorstspruit towards the east. The highest point of the Magaliesberg is reached at Nooitgedacht (1 852 metres)

25°51′30″S 27°31′48″E / 25.8583°S 27.530°E / -25.8583; 27.530.

ITEM ID : MagaliesbergMountains

PRICE : R350 including postage in South Africa

Four Seasons - Winter

Winter at Harties - watercolour on Ashrad hot pressed paper - Maree©
Size - 8" x 6" unframed

A collection of four small paintings, 8" x 6", depicting the four seasons - Autumn, Spring, Summer and Winter - and are all sketched from scenes in and around my area. This is WINTER in the series of the four seasons.

These four little paintings would look good grouped together with off-white matting and Sepia frames.

ITEM ID : FourSeasonsWinterTarlton

PRICE - R250.00 ea including postage in South Africa