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Summary

My work sets out to explore our individual and collective responsibility and dependence on each other.

To create a sense of connection and immersion in our world.

We are humans beings, we are a part of nature, woven in to it. We are not above it all. Nature R Us.

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Kate Schoonees, Painting 3 day class 2025
Artists Intention/Workplan

I want to create a sense of connection, immersion, and mindfulness in the quiet cacophany of nature and of life itself. Our humanity and sensibility being a part of it, woven into it, not above it all.

I am trying to push the visual experience to its limits, where every line, every dab of paint, every detail, every layer upon layer, build on each other in gothic intensity. Expanding, extending, progressing in spiraling movement and growth.

Voices upon voices in both harmony and discord. Cadence and pace intesifying to heighten the single overall impact of the painting on the viewer. To communicate and share my sense of wonder and reverence for the existence of life and our human experience. Our connection and dependence on each other and the natural world.

My work draws on and is inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Nouveau, Romantic, Jacobean, medieval, and folk styles and reflecting on these earlier aesthetics, however I would like to think it is underpinned by our current and growing scientific understanding of our human impact on the balance of nature. Our current war with nature needs to be recognized as a path to our own destruction.The intrinsic nature of life and death, the cycle of life, and our human connections need to be brought into balance.

My art and writing is an attempt to raise consciousness and hopes to be inspirational, thought provoking, while at the same time expressing the connection and the bonds with our world that tie us all together.

My work is filled with images of the organic. The tracery of nature is magnified to demonstrate the overlaying, overlapping, entwined mesh of lives, our world and our human experience. Transforming it into one of awe and hopefully a more conscious understanding.

I plan to do this by continuing with themes and work that I started last year. As well as work I did in 1994 to 1996 and work I did at Montbello Arts and Craft centre where the place and people had a big impact on my thinking and I have now returned to after a long break.

I will continue my life drawing practice as well as doing many small experimental exploratory works of an organic nature alongside much larger works that I hope to finish over the course of the year. I am keen to work on a fairly large scale to enhance the sense of immersion one gets with larger work. This of course will be a challenge in terms of transporting work to the school. I hope to achieve this by working on smaller panels that can be joined together.

K Schoonees

2025

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Still finishing off 1 Aug 2025

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I have decided to do them in this format 2x4 panels, lights above shade below

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Finally decided to do them in this format, 2x4 panels horizontal, lights above and darks below

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Detail

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Still working on it

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Detail

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I think it is now finished now 31 May So have been working on it on and off for about 4 months

See Leaf painting 2024

I stand aside you

I stand aside you

My toes touching roots

Tumbling turning

Swooping twisting

Your dear warmth

Holding me

To hang on, then to drop

And fall,

To lie and look up,

Accepting the sky

Cradling earth and life

Moving on and forward

Through leaves and layers

blustering wind

Our journey is slowly ebbing

as it should

K Schoonees 2024

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Bottom of the painting getting there I think this is the effect I want

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As you can see it's changed a lot 🤔🙈

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Working in detail

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Thinking of doing 4x4 canvases ie 800h x600 for each Night and Day

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Figuring it out

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Still working on it

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Stitching the clouds

Smudging and smearing

our hands raised high

We are steering  and guiding

the shapes in our sky

We are stitching the clouds

wirh branches and sticks

Our finger tips budding

In sparks and in spriggs

Rivers and eddies

flow in a whirl

Releasing our thoughts in

Whispers of pearl

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Almost done I think 🤔

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Still working on it

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Class Painting 2 Browne School hands

We are a gathering of artists waving at you come into our world for a minute or two

Summer, Sharon, Sue, Shirley, Calena, Anna, Anya, Zoe, Matthew, Cara, Traude, Sophie, me Kate, Andy, Jo

Life drawing hands

Maggie, Stuart, Barbara, B Bailey, Delia, Bernadette, Hados, John, John Burke, Ian Mune, Kat, Liam, Jenny Dow, Elizabeth

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To make it easier to stand up and paint on I have turned mine into a screen using
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2 sheets coreflute from modern Plastcs 1830x1220mm
2 x 30x10mm x approx 1800 mm long timber used on edge
4x 30x10mm x approx 1200mm long timber used on edge
Glue - no more nails
And aerosol Gorilla glue
53/8 mm rapid Staples (plenty of)
All Glued and stapled together to form a rigid very light screen

Allow fold over of between 6 to 8 cm on all sides, This allows the building paper to fold over the edges of the timber coreflute panel. This can then be stapled on the back side a bit like stretching a canvas.
Insert 2x grommets in the back for wall hanging

Overall size now 1700 H x 1130 W
(This just fits in the back of my car)

Cost about $85 approx

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Artists Statement

Drawing on Embedded Memory

Folded in my mind vibrates the chitter clatter

squawks and cries of lace across the sky

Jacobean curtains in golden sun

as excited cockoo warns of time

Curled hiding in Basotho blanket scrolls

A Natural History Museum of stuffed lore

and scary nighttime tales

Praying mantis stalks my brother's terror

while shongololo rolls up tight in

exploding wet grass of tiny frogs

the scritchty legged Christmas beetle is saved

Why do weavers hang their nests?

Snakes of course below

Hot toktokkie cheekily bums and finds his mate

How much of this will remain?

once we humans have had our gain

K Schonees    2024

words total 101

Acrylic pen and ink with ink washes and glazes, on primed ply panels with timber framing, screwed and glued to a braced plywood board.

1200mm W x 600mm H

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A Nod to Walter Battiss

My art mates
Teach and inspire me
And show me the way
With a clatter of coffee
And squidges of paint
A rattle of easles scraping the floor
A chatter of silence
On frowning foreheads.
We are a gathering of artists
Tied in a band, marching,
Marching like feathers
Holding birds in our hands.
May we be safe,
May we be kind,
May we live to see
And not to be blind.

K Schoonees
April 2024

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Still working on it