LOCAL ARTIST CELEBRATES 365 DAYS OF ART WITH EXHIBITION

GRAAFF-REINET — Janet Kingwill, a farmer’s wife and artist from the farm Grand View in the Murraysburg district, set herself the challenge of completing a paint- ing or drawing every day for a year.

With great discipline and dedication, she has achieved this. An exhibition has been planned to show these works to the public and celebrate Janet Kingwill - a farmer’s wife and artist from the farm Grand View in the Murraysburg district. her success. The artworks on show are in a wide variety of mediums: oil paint, watercolour, pastels, acrylic paints, charcoal, inks and pencil, and vary in size from small sketches to large framed oil paintings.

Kingwill has had a passion for drawing from a young age and practised her skill as a child by sketching animals and plants in the dioramas of the Cape Town Museum while her father, a scientist at the Museum, worked in his laboratory. Since her children have grown and left home she has been able to dedicate more time to art and has benefitted from attending courses with many local artists: Bob Mckenzie, Esme Gooseneck, Teresa Hardman, Darryl Legg and Greg Kerr, as well as being a founder member of the Murraysburg Painting Group.

An Internet project run by Di Metcalf of Cape Town ignited her enthusiasm for daily sketching and sharing her work on Instagram and Facebook. She cultivated a habit of sketching on a daily basis during two trips to Europe and found that the places she recorded in sketches and painting held far more meaning for her on her return than those she captured on photographs. She was then challenged by fellow artists to extend this practice to encompass a daily sketch or painting for an entire year.

This disciplined practice of her skills has had a great impact on her work. It has trained her eye to look beyond the details and concentrate on essential shapes and forms, and her increased confidence has resulted in her art becoming more fluent and fluid while the spontaneity of her approach is evident in fresh appealing works.

The public of Graaff-reinet is warmly invited to visit this exhibition. It will be held in one of the oldest houses in the town, the thatched Cape Dutch house belonging to Shirley Grindley at 135 Cradock Street. The opening is scheduled for Friday, October 27, 18:30 when visitors will be welcomed with a glass of wine. Those who cannot attend the opening can visit the exhibition on Saturday or Sunday, October 28 and 29, between the hours of 10:00 and 15:00. Artworks and greeting cards of the paintings will be on sale.