Freeing Art and Soul

I could always paint. Since I can remember I drew pictures and always got good reaction. My goal was to become a renowned artist (I was 15 for Pete's sake!), someone like Michelangelo (please don't laugh) for whom the world would have great respect and admiration.

But when you marry, you shouldn't have any great expectations from life. That is where it ends for you – actually, when you have children, and I had five. I stopped painting because of the mess when little people also want to paint. I married an author and he got me into writing novels which I did for many, many years, but my first love was always painting.

When we got married, my husband used to brag about his very "talented" wife, and he nagged me to draw other people's children, but after a while his compliments became stale. He was driving me towards something I refused to do ... drawing other people's children. Just pencil sketches, but that was what he saw as the ultimate in talent.

Being a rebel by nature I flatly refused, and we had enormous rows about it, so much so that I completely stopped painting for about thirty years. I only used my talent when absolutely necessary like designing a book cover or a letterhead, something that had to do with our small publishing business.

After four decades my sister came to live in my part of the country, the Western Cape, and also found a house to rent among the beautiful hills surrounding the towering cliffs of the Swartberge. She isn't a great artist, but she paints interesting, fascinating subjects and loves doing it. She also has no boundaries like I have and she is free to paint whatever she wants.

After all these dead years she inspired me again to paint. For the first time in my life I tried my hand on portraits and I liked it – paintings, not drawings.

Here is one of my first granddaughter wearing her favourite colourful wig.

We went to the beach and I painted one where my daughter tried to get irritating sand off her little one.

I like these because I proved to myself that I can still paint, even portraits, and I could still be an artist. It was in me and had not disappeared.

Another year went by and my sister and I frequently visited a restaurant about 20 km on the road to Montagu. If you ever come to South Africa, visit that restaurant. The food is good and the service excellent. But I'm wandering from what I want to tell you.

In this restaurant we found a small art gallery and the lady said we could bring our paintings as well. She sells every single one she takes in. Now this is what I'm going to do. I will paint what I want, like my sister, and feel free again.

Well, that's what I thought.

I told my husband what I was planning to do, and what did he say? "You should draw people's children. They will pay you for it and you can make a little money."

I said: "I won't do it."

"You can make money."

"Did I say anything about making money?"

He was getting peeved, but I flatly refused to do what he wanted and there is a very good reason for my refusal.

In my imagination I see a girl growing up on a dusty farm, far from real civilization. She has this very special talent for painting which can bring her so much joy, but she is doomed to make pencil drawings of her uncle Ned or aunt Julie or little Johnny with his freckles ... because she will never be allowed to grow. She is surrounded by people without vision. Their horizon is very close to home. She could have spread her wings had she not been tied to a dusty, dead tree. As time goes by she will bury her dreams in the dust and sand and when she is old and her hand not so steady anymore, she will remember and cry at night for what she could have been.

I don't want to become that. I will paint what I like and hopefully like what I paint. I will be myself and chase whatever dreams are left to chase.

You do the same.