Monthly Meetings

Our monthly meeting on Thursday evening, 31 October was very interesting. Internationally known impressionist artist Derric van Rensburg gave a demonstration on landscape painting. Derric was born 1952 in Cape Town.

Since his first exhibition in Cape Town in 1976, he has been commissioned by various clients including multinational corporate clients such as First National Bank, South African Airways, Price Waterhouse Coopers and Mobil. His work is internationally recognised and he has been rated as one of South Africa’s top artists. Van Rensburg’s career was celebrated in a coffee table book published in 2007 to coincide with the artist’s 55th birthday. Derric is self-taught and has developed a method that is both unique and mesmerising to watch. In less than an hour he carved a landscape out of a blank canvas.

Starting with a canvas washed in a neutral ground, Derric quickly sketched out a main concept and then started to work intuitively with a large brush to lay down the main blocks of colour that he saw in his reference. The reference is merely an idea, and is not followed strictly. Derric says he follows a method of working from general to specific. The next step was to start defining objects within the landscape such as a fence and some trees. He remained very loose in his approach, sometimes adding in a shadow before actually painting the object casting it, using thinks like solvents and tissue paper to create textures.

Highlights in the trees were achieved by applying yellow directly over the darker blues and purples that had already been laid down in the first steps of the process. For this he used a piece of cardboard instead of a brush. He also used a rubber squidgy to create clean edges and detail. In pursuit of creating dappled light effects, Derric tries to allow light and shadow to emerge intuitively, with great effect. Derric’s demonstration was a great lesson in loosening up when painting. Those of us who were there learned so much from this masterful painter.