DRAWiNGS
NiCOLAAS MARiTZ
DRAWiNGS A sketchbook of selected digital works made between 2014 - 2018
NiCOLAAS MARiTZ
Nemesia*Press_online DARLiNG 2018
CONTENTS Introduction Black and white drawings Colour drawings Biography
INTRODUCTION Art is difficult. It's not entertainment. Anselm Kiefer When people don't understand my work, I don't feel like explaining. Yoko Ono In the final analysis, a drawing simply is no longer a drawing, no matter how self-sufficient its execution may be. It is a symbol, and the more profoundly the imaginary lines of projection meet higher dimensions, the better. Paul Klee I cannot remember a time in my life when I wasn’t drawing. Any drawing utensil on any piece of paper did for me. And I never thought of myself as an artist whilst drawing. Somehow I have always been caught up in the magic of drawing. I am rather intimidated by expensive art papers and expensive ink. I still have a pad of very good quality Fabriano paper that someone gave me as a Christmas present in 1967, that I will never use. For a long time I couldn’t watch TV without having a ball-point pen and some Xerox waste paper to draw on. TV is so boring after all. But things have moved on. Now that I draw using a stylus and a graphics pad, I am somewhat happier. It’s not so intimidating, rather classless, and free. And the colour quality is mesmerizing. The drawing has become the TV.
Whether to print out these digital works or not, certainly becomes a pesky question, but not an immediate pressure. If music has a reality on records, compact discs and mp3’s, drawings can be equally accessible on the web. A medium is a medium is a medium, to misquote Gertrude Stein. And alas, like the poor, ‘the new’ will always be with us. If I do something that depresses, it's not because I'm depressed, but because political life and history is depressing. Anselm Kiefer Subject matter in art is often assessed and criticized as an aspect apart from the rest of the drawing; some strange division made between subject and execution. I don’t get that. It seems over-academic and unnecessarily scientific to me. This artist hardly aspires to be a sociologist… My approach to drawing is invariably to let the things happen as they will. Sometimes there are false starts, but very often interesting visual things begin happening only when one is already busy with the drawing. One thing leads to another. I like walking; going for walks. Around the village; into the veld; anywhere. The act of walking is like making a line. Conversely I think of drawing as going for a walk. Sometimes the destination is not visible, sometimes not even important, since the walking/drawing in itself is the thing that really matters. And there are millions of walks in the imagination. With drawing, as with walking, one comes across unexpected things, a turn in the path, a nice view or an obstruction. The two activities are very similar. One is both challenged and energized by it. I agree with Dario Fo when he says: “Whilst drawing, I discover what I really want to say.” Nicolaas Maritz, Darling, 2018
Many are they who have a taste and love for drawing, but no talent; and this will be discernible in boys who are not diligent and never finish their drawings with shading. Leonardo da Vinci
BLACK AND WHITE DRAWINGS In drawing, one must look for, or suspect, that there is more than is casually seen. George Bridgman Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression. A species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality. Edgar Degas
Ritualist, 2015
Afternoon Bath, 2015
Rock Shapes, 2015
Pebbles, 2015
Okahandja Girls, 2016
Topknot Moons, 2016
Pigeon Moons, 2015
Dordabis Highrise, 2015
Wooden Snake Shape, 2015
Modern Head, 2015
Four Phallic Shapes, 2016
Three Parsnips, 2016
Studio Clutter, 2015
Kwatthu Eland, 2016
Two Pawpaws, 2015
Banana and Mango Still Life, 2015
Pringle Bay Pebbles, 2015
Pringle Bay Night View, 2015
Pringle Bay Full Moon View, 2015
The Glove in the Dream, 2015
Crockery Bits from the Garden, 2015
Speech Impediment, 2015
A ‘Cupcake’ Hairstyle, 2016
Darling Steel Wool Hairdo, 2016
Swartland Quarry View, 2016
Hesitant Creature, 2016
Small Town Wear and Tear, 2016
Rural Potter with Chinese Wig, 2017
Thabazimbi Dreamland, 2015
Mountain Dog, 2015
Cape Nocturne with Snake, 2016
Pringle Bay Conundrum, 2016
Old Seaside Duffer, 2015
Nocturnal Paraphernalia with Two Moons, 2016
Gecko Advice, 2015
If Only You Could Walk In My Shoes, 2015
COLOUR DRAWINGS Drawing used to be a civilized thing to do, like reading and writing. It was taught in elementary schools. It was democratic. It was a boon to happiness. Michael Kimmelman
For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true. John Berger
Darling Spring, 2016
Pine Tree Mountains, 2016
Summer Marbles, 2015
Marbled Afternoon, 2015
Eastern Cape River Mouth, 2016
Kalahari Winter View, 2016
Foolish Creature, 2015
Three Phallic Shapes from Delft, 2018
A Picture of Astonishment, 2018
Sepia Afternoon, 2016
Pale Blue Familiar, 2015
Whispering Familiar, 2015
Familiar Flower, 2015
Familiar Doll, 2015
Two Keen Flea Marketers, 2015
Blonde Boyfriends, 2015
Three Pink Ancestral Apparitions, 2015
Three Turquoise Ancestral Apparitions with Lizards, 2015
Three Young Guys from Melkbosstrand, 2015
Three Simpering Tamboerskloof Queens, 2015
Twenty-something, 2015
Fifty-something, 2018
Two Intense Aubergines, 2018
Two Pale Pears in a Broken Bowl, 2016
Pink Cloud Dream with Black Kitty, 2018
Cape Town Dry Lemon, 2015
Two Local Parties, 2015
Two Stellenbosch Types, 2015
Karoobult Farmyard View 1, 2015
Karoobult Farmyard View 2, 2015
Footsie, 2015
Veldflower Moons, 2015
Darling Red Spring Moons, 2015
Darling Wild Night Flowers,2015
West Coast Floral Moons, 2015
Swartland Floral Moons, 2015
Richtersveld Spring Moons, 2015
Richtersveld Daisy Moons, 2015
Segmented Still Life, 2015
Tropical Fruit in a Turqouise Bowl, 2015
Hippy Fishburst 1, 2015
Hippy Fishburst 2, 2015
Green Musselcracker, 2015
Pink Musselcracker 2015
Two Moon Fishy 1, 2015
Two Moon Fishy 2, 2015
Two Moon Fishy 3, 2015
Two Moon Fishy 4, 2015
Two Moon Fishy 5, 2015
Two Moon Fishy 6, 2015
Scary Rural Child, 2017
Small Town Spiritualist, 2017
Purple Rinse, 2016
Green Eyed Charmer, 2017
Bilious Evening, 2017
Henna Glow, 2017
Miss Golden Opportunity, 2016
Swartland Twins, 2017
Still Keeping it Together, 2017
Rural Lust, 2017
Logical Personnage, 2017
Swartland Daisy Personnage, 2016
Rural Activist with Drop Earrings, 2016
Protestant Virgin with Milk Teeth, 2016
Apostolic Insect Woman, 2016
True Hart Projection, 2016
A Shoulder to Cry on, 2016
Miss Swartland & West Coast Lips, 2016
Blue Irises, 2017
Full Moon Friends, 2017
Fried Egg Moon, 2017
Wily Customer, 2017
Mood Indigo Etcetera. 2017
Three Marks of Shame, 2017
Night Creature, 2017
Bi-polar Moons, 2017
Carcinoma Face, 2017
The Squint-eyed Boy, 2017
Dickhead, 2017
Pigeon Face, 2017
Bothered, 2017
Temptation, 2017
Biography Nicolaas Maritz (born 9 July 1959) is a South African multimedia artist. His artistic roots are deeply embedded in the Southern African landscape. Drawing inspiration from its shapes and colours, its creatures and its sounds, he has, during his long career, created a unique body of work, instantly recognizable by virtue of the idiosyncrasy of his vision and the immediacy of the manner in which it is realized. Curious juxtapositions – of the real and the fantastical, the natural and the artificial, the simple and the complex, the humorous and the sinister – are a defining characteristic of Maritz’s art. Many writers have commented on this aspect of his work, and on the creative friction generated by this interplay of contradictory elements, which extends also to his stylistic usage and artistic aims. In describing his paintings, Hilary Prendini-Toffoli writes, “though deceptively naive, in a retro technique evocative of the ‘30s and ‘40s, these multi-levelled paintings manage at the same time to be both meaningful and decorative.” Maritz was born into an artistic Pretoria family, his father an architect and his mother a ceramic artist. Early influences which
were to inform his work, were derived from his parents, his Namibian grandmother, and two artistic Pretoria aunts. Their architectural designs and drawings, watercolours, graphic work, ceramics and illustrations inspired the young Maritz, and helped to form his precocious artistic sensibility, long before he reached art school at the University of Cape Town in 1978. Maritz is a prolific artist, but seems to possess an almost boundless ability to reinvent his aesthetic approach. He is particularly known for his paintings of the Southern African landscape, especially for his singular portrayals of Table Mountain, but his extensive oeuvre is by no means limited to this genre. It includes a large body of paintings, as well as drawings and prints, with excursions into graphic design, ceramics, sculpture, digital and other media. In recent years his approach has been to re-cycle some of his past works in ‘traditional‘ media, through digital collage and montage techniques, to create contemporary and cryptic fusion forms, featuring digital drawing and manipulation, layered sound, and video.
Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working. Pablo Picasso
https://sites.google.com/site/nicolaasmaritzgallery/