Nothing beats the beauty of an outdoor studio
Ever with her sketchbook in hand, Makhanda-born artist Beth Lowe captures ordinary moments, and always clouds
Beth Lowe captures images wherever she goes, but it is not her cellphone she whips out when something catches her eye, but her sketchbook and pencil.
Now living near the sea in Cape Town, Makhanda-born Lowe, 63, sees her work as a “constant journal” of her life and is a wellknown sight on the beaches near Kommetjie where she sets up her easel to record nature in deft brush strokes of colour on canvas.
“I love how in the passage of my life I feel I’m recording some kind of history.
“Some moments are really historic but others are simpler changes in the environment that I record,” says Lowe, who works in oils or water colours, as well as gouache, a technique in which colour coats the surface of the paper, giving it an opaque quality.
“I am inspired by life around me. I am known for especially loving clouds and wild weather conditions.
“My love for clouds started as a little girl, I remember being enthralled by the growing tumbling cumulus clouds of the Northern Cape where much of my childhood was spent.”
Growing up around practical parents of farming stock meant she also was often creating or making something.
“Neither of my parents were artists, but my granny was a great encouragement to me and was always supplying me with materials.
“I clearly remember getting my first set of oil paints from her. She was definitely one of my main cheerleaders.”
Lowe can trace her family back to the 1820 Settlers and is a descendant of Methodist minister John Ayliff who accompanied the Settlers to SA.
Her early life was spent in Trappes Valley, where her parents farmed, and school holidays were enjoyed with her grandparents in Bathurst.
When her parents moved to a farm in the Northern Cape, she became a boarder at Queenstown Girls High School where she matriculated, before graduating with a BA in school fine Arts levels and an as HED, well as allowing running her a to children teach.’ s
“I taught art at both primary and high art class from home for many years while my children were growing up,” says Lowe, who remembers a childhood fascination with the coast.
“I love the ordinary things that surround us daily, like a bunch of flowers or the shadows on a white wall.
“As a child I dreamt of living near the ocean and this has been a dream that has been fulfilled and I never take it for granted. I’m in awe daily of the beauty that surrounds us.
“In essence, I am always trying to catch the light.”
Having moved to the seaside village of Kommetjie with her husband 23 years ago, she is living the dream.
“Kommetjie is just beautiful with such diversity and is a constant source of inspiration.”
It is here that she revels in pleinair painting — painting outdoors.
“I think I have always been a pleinair painter at heart.
“My head tells me that I need to work from life and have largely always tried to work from life.
“I think you learn far more skills that way.”
This is why she totes art materials with her wherever she goes.
“I seldom go anywhere — not without my purse — but without my sketching bag.
“You never know when you will have nothing better to do — like in a bank or supermarket queue.”
And, if it is a human subject that she feels compelled to encapsulate, she has devised a way to do so undetected.
“I have a cunning way of drawing someone and as soon as they think I am, I quickly switch to the next person and so far have seldom been caught out!”
Setting up her easel on the beach or in her garden means hours of immersion in nature and its hues, but it also has setbacks not found in a comfortable indoor studio.
“Being a pleinair painter — a French term from the impressionists and meaning in the open air — means I have the most beautiful studio and I get to enjoy the beauty and experience the passage of time, all the time trying to capture the moment. It’s exhilarating.
“It has some difficulties, like the wind, rain and bugs, never mind losing your brushes or worse, your fresh painting landing face down in the sand!”
Lowe also documents beauty when she goes further afield and, again has concocted crafty ways to carry sketchbooks and carve out moments to use them.
“I love hiking and of course I couldn’t possibly do a five-day trail without any painting. So I found a solution, as I do for every new problem that comes my way.
“I always wear a linen shirt while hiking or painting so I have a small sketchbook in my top pocket.
“I walk faster than my husband and sketch as I wait for him to catch up — a great arrangement.
“I feel alive and inspired and I do go out most days or certainly as often as is possible.”
Holidays are spent artfully journaling her experiences and a two-week stint in a beautiful place fills an entire sketchbook in the same way the rest of us fill up our cellphone galleries.
“This is a far more meaningful reminder of travels as one has been so present when sketching than taking a million random photos.
“We so often refer back to sketchbooks for details of places, dates or many other times that a memory needs to be jolted.”
Lowe’s Instagram page is infused with glorious images of her work — chunky jugs filled with pansies and nasturtiums from her garden, blazing sunsets, preoccupied nest-building weavers, surfers exiting the water and clouds. Always clouds. Whether they be dark and brooding or fluffy and feathery, her girlhood interest in clouds permeates her canvasses.
Asked if she paints every flower posy she receives or picks she says she never misses an opportunity to capture their beauty.
And, like any techno savvy Instagrammer, she produces fascinating reels of how she does it.
“I suppose the reels are Insta’s new way of recording life and I am not great at it but it is a way of inspiring and sharing with fellow artists. I have met wonderful friends through Insta even though I have this love/hate relationship with social media.”
Bringing up three children meant some years yielded less time to paint, but Lowe has always expressed her creativity in one way or another. “I did create all the time, sometimes more in interior work or dressmaking than art but always felt that if I’d made something in a day, it had been a good day.”
Now, as a devoted grandmother, she delights in drawing the little ones. “Becoming a granny has been such a wondrous experience and I do just love trying to capture the essence of the little people and their movements and their journey of growing up and capturing the stages of their development.”
As a member of the South African Society of Artists (Sasa), Lowe has exhibited her work at Kirstenbosch as well as juried exhibitions.
“I have won a number of awards from Sasa and won the Pleinair Landscape Award for a number of years now.
“I am honoured to have just been made a Fellow of the society; a highly prized award.”
Twice a year, the Lowe home becomes an exhibition space and she also participates in Kommetjie’s annual open studio events and is represented in a few galleries.
“I am grateful for painting in my life as I often feel I don’t have enough life left to learn all there is to learn. So God willing, I hope I’m painting till the end.”