Press Articles

Gulf News Tabloid -Tuesday October 30, 2001

By Sonali Raha

Rock Stable

Rocks fascinate South African Artist now showing in Dubai.

"Rocks fascinate me. They are old. They tell stories… of the beginning of the earth, of how the world has grown," says artist Lynette ten Krooden. Introduced to the rocks of the UAE six years ago, she now travels regularly from her South African home to experience the desert, and take inspiration from it."

"I like small rocks and big. I hold small rocks in hand, they are intimate and natural. They capture all sorts of gems and precious materials and you can actually see their traces on the surface. I sit on big rocks. They broaden horizons", she explains.

Lynette is showing her latest works at The Majlis Gallery, Dubai (see box on pg. 2). She says she is especially drawn to the mountains of the UAE. "The stone formations in the desert are very different. You can actually see the sand tuning into stone and that texture is very, very special. In the desert, you can stand next to a mountain and actually touch it - it is so accessible. The mountains here are older and more austere than the mountains in South Africa. They tell older stories. "She also finds these mountains are "energy places", zones that replenish her mind and spirit. She was introduced to Dubai in the best possible way. Two gentlemen from this city bought her work at an exhibition she held in Johannesburg. Later some friends said they were going to visit Dubai and asked her to come along as well. She came with a portfolio of her work. She couldn't trace a gallery and then, by sheer chance, an American resident she met on a desert safari mentioned a gallery on Al Fahidi Street. "The taxi dropped me off on the top of "Al Fahide Street. I walked down the whole street in 43 degrees Centigrade, carrying a portfolio of 12 paintings under my arm. I found this gallery, walked in, was made very welcome", she recalls. So began a close and continuing relationship with The Majlis Gallery. Lynette's own relationship with painting began when she was a child. "I've been painting for as long as I can remember, I was given the gift to work with and I did", she says simply. "I remember clearly what I painted when I was six years old. A little pool that my parents had just built at home. I painted it with the water, blue and rippling, and put in the little stone that was in the middle as well." Stones and water continue to be her main inspiration. The colours she uses most are "whites, blacks, greys, ochres and siennas" that dominate rockscapes everywhere. At the same time, she also uses blues. "I've loved mountains and water from the time I was born. I am a scuba diver. I love the water, I love the water captured in stones like the turquoise and aquamarine" she details.

Lynette chose, consciously, to study art. "In school I was very good in biology and mathematics. I couldn't decide whether to become a doctor or an artist. So I applied for both courses in the University of Pretoria, and got accepted in both. But my destiny was to study art, so I did 'she says. She worked in a veterinary hospital in the surgical department - to pay for college. "In a way that helped to satisfy the scientist in me" she remembers. That scientist continues to find expression. "I do a lot of experimenting with new materials and techniques and textures."

Wonderful

Lynette paints on handmade paper, canvas and unusually, on stones and rocks, "especially when they have different colours and textures". The first time she discovered A fossil she "could not believe how wonderful" it was. She uses a lot of gold and silver leaf work and is comfortable with both water colours and oils. A busy mother of two sons, eight and 14, plus a lecturer in painting at two institutions, Lynette paints at her family home in the night, when "everything around is quiet". She paints in series, usually four to six paintings at a time. She paints for six to eight hours a day. Sometimes a painting takes two to four weeks to finish, sometimes it could take three months,

The research for Lynette ten Krooden's paintings comes from books and travel. She has done a project in a five-star resort on the Fiji islands and painted the Ayers Rock in Australia, invited by Australian tourists who admired her work in Fiji. She has visited the pyramids in Egypt and felt their energy and she has touched mountains in the Emirates and felt their strength

Depending on the size and weather (she builds up layers of paint and must wait for each layer to dry). The largest canvas she has worked on has been six metres by two; the smallest three by two, centimeters. "Painting is so much a part of me that I cannot imagine life without it. I do research and think of may work all the time. Sometimes it is traumatic when I'm about to start. Because I do not know whether my work will say what I want it to say. But once I start working, it's like a release. And I know a work is finished when it stops asking questions. When I look at I and feel a sense of achievement and well-being," she says. The research for her paintings comes from books and travel. She has done a project in a five-star resort on the Fiji Islands and painted the Ayers Rock in Australia, invited by Australian tourists who admired her work in Fiji.

Chinese symbols

She has studied Chinese symbols used in leaf and silver work in Vietnam and loomed at rock formations and stone monuments in Cornwall. She has visited the pyramids in Egypt and felt their energy and she has touched mountains in the emirates and felt their strength. "Dubai is not just a place where I sell my paintings. Dubai enriches me. The mountains and water around it energies me," she says. And her smile touches and warms her eyes and words.

HIDDEN MESSAGE

Lynette ten Krooden is showing her latest work at the Majlis Gallery, Dubai. Her theme this time is "Hidden Messages", an extension of her "Prayers to the Sky" series shown earlier at the same gallery. "I'm fascinated by the sophistication of Arabic calligraphy, by its shapes and swirls. They carry stories and messages which are not known to me," she says. This series seeks those hidden messages. Thirty-six works are on show, created out of impressions taken home after her Dubai visit last November. Majority is of calligraphy used purely as a decorative form. There are also 10 paintings of doorways - "passages into other hidden stories" - and eight of night skies - "telling stories of the desert". Everything, calligraphy, doors or even bits of carpets, are etched against a shifting, yet stable, background of rock. Rock s in sienna sienna and ochre, with little hints and splashes of a crimson or a turquoise. "I'm growing, evolving all the time. Sometimes when I work with a new technique old ideas keep flowing back. Together, they become something entirely new. You just have to keep finding new ways of expressing yourself," she says, pointing out she has added silver tassels to some of her paintings just before putting them up. The largest painting shown in this exhibition is one metre by 800 centimetres; the smallest 10 by 10 centimetres. Prices range between Dhs 295 and Dhs 5,000. The show continues till November 4. On weekdays the gallery is open from 9.30am to 1.30pm and again from 4.30pm to 8.00pm. It is closed on Fridays.