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)

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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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