Venter, Annelie - VM - Erna Buber-deVilliers
ArtWay Visual Meditation June 1, 2014
Annelie Venter: Sandveld Landscape with Insect Traces
Whispered Traces
by Erna Buber-deVilliers
Twenty minutes north of
In her words: ‘The scientist in me wants to explore, discover, analyze, using the camera to capture fractions of nature and moments in time. When I turn my photographs into paint, I don’t want to generalize. I want to paint every individual flower with the love and respect it deserves. I like the way the flowers grow together. It is as if every group of flowers tells a different story.’
The story that Insect Traces whispers, what is it?
The painting immediately reminded me of the meandering journey the Israelites made between
Annelie says, ‘If you take photos at random there is always balance and rhythm to be found. I only paint the truth, never rearranging anything.’ The way things are right now in my life, is the way they need to be under God’s direction. As he led the Israelites, he will lead me. I might seem to be going around in circles here and there, but I am getting where I’m meant to be.
We are born for freedom, but our fears and unbelief often keep us from stepping into the wider space that God has given us. Yet he patiently waits, he keeps his loving eye attentively upon us and he teaches us. Our every life experience is part of his perfect plan. He’ll never let go until we have shed every shred of the old life’s skin and can emerge as new creations in Christ. Nothing is random, nothing is accidental.
If an artist finds beauty in a small patch of barren Sandveld, is there not beauty too in my life with its many ‘wrong’ turnings?
… if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won't he more surely care for you? (Matthew 6:30)
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Annelie Venter: Sandveld Landscape with Insect Traces, 2011, oil on canvas, 50 x
Annelie Venter (1955) was born in
Find Annelie and her paintings on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/annelie.venter.7?ref=ts&fref=ts. See more of her work athttp://www.southafricanartists.com/showartist.asp?Code=VENTE007
Erna Buber-deVilliers is a retired art teacher. When Annelie Venter taught science, they were colleagues at the same high school. Erna writes, edits, translates, draws, plays on facebook, researches genealogy, knits, crochets, sometimes paints and is artist Zak Benjamin’s wife and personal assistant. She thinks a lot about art and about being a Christian in the world.
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ON THE WEBSITE NEW ON THE WEBSITE NEWS
1. Annelie Venter’s forthcoming exhibition at Dawid’ Choice Gallery,
2. 6 June – 8 June,
3. 8 June – 15 June, Glen Workshop East. Check out the Glen website to see this year's faculty lineup, including Eugene Peterson, Over the Rhine, Gareth Higgins, Gregory Orr, Suzanne and Gregory Wolfe, Dennis Covington, Marilyn Nelson, Linnea Spransy, Scott Cairns, Susan E. Isaacs and many, many more. The Glen Workshop combines the best elements of a weeklong workshop, an arts festival, and a spiritual retreat. Find out more.
4. 10 September – 13 September, Oxford: conference on ‘David Jones: Christian Modernist?’, organized by the Centre for Christianity and Culture, Regent’s Park College, Oxford and the Modernism and Christianity Project of the University of Bergen, Norway. Modernism in literature and the arts is associated with cultural and political rebellion. For many modernists, Christianity stood for a bygone era to be overcome; the reactionary, dead hand of the past. Yet David Jones’ art, poetry and cultural theory subvert this neat dichotomy. He was a Catholic convert with a deep appreciation of the Church’s ancient liturgy and tradition; but he also conceived his Catholicism as a mode of cultural ‘sabotage’ and a sign of ‘contradiction’. The deadline for registration is 15 June 2014. http://modernismchristianity.org/david-jones-conference
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