The Restory Retreat Centre

Ceramic V-bowl with leaves by Matilda Angus Coffee table converted from old dining room table by George Angus "When you buy from an independent artist, you are buying more than just a painting [or vase, or chair]. You are buying hundreds of hours of experimentation and thousands of failures. You are buying days, weeks, months, years of frustration and moments of pure joy. You are buying nights of worry about paying the rent, having enough money to eat, having enough money to feed the children, the birds, the dog. You aren’t just buying a thing, you are buying a piece of heart, part of soul, a private moment in someone’s life. Most importantly, you are buying that artist more time to do something they are fully passionate about; something that makes all the above worth the fear and the doubt; something that puts the life into living.”                             ...

House of Parliament, Sunset (1900, 1901) - Claude Monet (Claude Monet, the French impressionist painter developed cataracts as he aged, but refused to have them surgically removed.) Monet Refuses the Operation Doctor, you say there are no haloes around the streetlights in Paris and what I see is an aberration caused by old age, an affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, to soften and blur and finally banish the edges you regret I don’t see, to learn that the line I called the horizon does not exist and sky and water, so long apart, are the same state of being. Fifty-four years before I could see Rouen cathedral is built of parallel shafts of sun, and now you want to restore my youthful errors: fixed notions of top and bottom, the illusion of three-dimensional space, wisteria separate from the bridge it covers. What can I say to convince you the Houses of Parliament dissolve night after night to become the fluid dream of...

The Great Wave off Kanagawa - Painting by Katsushika Hokusai Hokusai says look carefully. He says pay attention, notice. He says keep looking, stay curious. He says there is no end to seeing. He says look forward to getting old He says keep changing, you just get more who you really are. He says get stuck, accept it, repeat yourself as long as it’s interesting. He says keep doing what you love. He says keep praying. He says every one of us is a child, every one of us is ancient, every one of us has a body. He says every one of us is frightened. He says every one of us has to find a way to live with fear. He says everything is alive – shells, buildings, people, fish, mountains, trees, wood is alive. Water is alive. Everything has its own life. Everything lives inside us. He says live with the world inside you. He says it doesn’t matter if you draw, or write books. It doesn’t matter if you saw wood, or catch fish. It doesn’t matter if you sit at...

Our Town: 1943 skildery deur L.S. Lowry “Today as I stood whipping up a new batch of cream, sunlight brightening  the kitchen, the fragrance of lavender heavy in the air, the moment felt infused by God. Every minute detail of colour, fragrance, variety, use and beauty  matters. Everything matters. Everything speaks of care. Of love. Of God.” Dit was daardie laaste paragraaf in Matilda se stuk Whipping up some love wat my weer die digbundel uit die boekrak laat trek het. My vingers ken teen dié tyd die paadjie al goed na Jan Swanepoel se Die ganse dag is ene God , een van my gunsteling gedigte. soos destyds is U ook vandag nie in die donker onweer nie, nie in die weerlig wat die hemel helblink skeur as teken van u krag; al luister ek hoe fyn vandag: selfs in die ligte ruising van die wind is U ten ene male nie, maar oral in my oë en ore: die ganse dag is ene God: ‘n swaeltjie swenk en vou die hemel blou-blou om sy rug ‘n geelvink sk...

Painting by Johan Angus I can’t remember exactly how he was born. He arrived years ago like dew in the night – one day Roy was there. I do recall that it was during one of the most difficult and confusing periods of my life. Since then he stayed. He might be silent for weeks, but never do I have the feeling that he is far off. He is ever present in the wings. The origin of his name is a mystery too. It was not as if I decided to call him that. I met him as Roy. The same goes for his appearance. He is slender, with thin, flat hair. In his thirties, usually wearing a golf shirt and a pair of overall trousers. Mostly he sits. Not as if he’s lazy, more as if he is waiting and content in the knowledge that what needs to be done is being done. We meet each other in my journal. As I’ve said, he might be quiet for weeks and then, on any particular morning, he’ll be there on the page. On such an occasion my journal entry takes the form of a conversation: Roy: I s...

In an age where anxiety is rampant, despite all our developments and achievements, Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream almost acts as a society’s emblem. No wonder it sold for $120m at a Sotheby’s auction in New York last year.  Now I’m wondering: How did we get to the point where such a painting reflects our underlying mood? As I said, despite all our developments and achievements. What is lacking when we seem to have it all? And although I absolutely adore the painting, I find the price a bit too steep. How is it possible that somebody has so much money (In excess I might add. His/her other living expenses are apparently covered and he/she has a little something lying around to invest somewhere), while millions on the planet do not know where the next meal will come from? If ever. What is wrong with this picture? Pardon the pun! Edvard Munch was himself a troubled man. Suffering from insomnia, he would often book himself an overnight couchette to Oslo, as he f...

Collage of an odd coincidence This image of a painting by a Russian painter, Zinaida Serebriakova, painted in 1930 and called Terrace in Collioure, caught my eye. To be more precise, it hit me with a strange recognition. Not of deja vu in the strictest sense, as in something relived, but more of recognition of what is to come, maybe. There I am on the veranda of an old farmhouse, looking out over the familiar peaks of Wakkerstroom. Only, this is a scene in southern France, painted more than eighty years ago. Who is this painter? I have to know more! Matilda