We chatted to painter Jake Aikman about the inspiration behind his enigmatic and evocative seascapes, which have transcended the canvas to adorn a building in Ukraine’s capital city.

Why did you start painting water?

When I was at Michaelis School of Fine Art I did a series of photorealistic paintings where water was quite central to the theme. For the project, I asked my dad to climb into Dalebrook Tidal Pool in St James, Cape Town. He looked so vulnerable and it made me think about human vulnerability in water. I also surf, which naturally created an interest in the ocean, particularly as an element you can’t control. Seeing my father in the water, his human frailty, I wanted to evoke this same feeling in a painting without the human figure.

Your paintings have been described as peaceful and also as haunting. How do you get the emotion across? 

I suppose I evoke response through the colour and the movement of the water. I believe the people who say a work is peaceful are at peace when they come to view it; I’m not at peace when I’m making it. People have very strong responses to the work and sometimes it’s negative. It’s speaking to what’s happening inside of them. That’s why I abandoned the figure. I wanted the viewer to engage with that feeling and for me to get something ambiguous and universal across.

You recently returned from Spain. Tell us a bit more about that trip.

I had a solo show in Granada. I spent just over a week there. It’s not a big city and it doesn’t have a vibrant art scene. Tourists go there to visit castles (which were fantastic, by the way). I made a good connection there and have been invited to an art fair in Turin, Italy, which is happening in November.

Did your time at Bracciano Lake in Italy inspire any of your work?

I was there for a month in 2014 participating in a residency in one of the small towns. (There are three towns around the lake.) Bracciano is about 20 km northwest of Rome. I had a studio and started producing some of the paintings I work on now. There are dramatic changes in the weather there. The lake can change drastically, and it can, in turn, change the mood of the people. The locals often spoke to me about how that body of water affected their emotions.

How has surfing inspired your seascapes?

The influence surfing has on my painting is not from when I’m catching waves; it’s when I’m bobbing at the backline, vulnerable and exposed. I try to go to Cape Point Nature Reserve as much as I can and I’ve surfed there alone a few times. This one time, I had otters swim up to me in the line-up, flip onto their backs and smash shellfish on their chests. There are no houses around, no cars. It feels like an atavistic experience. It takes you back. It’s timeless. I try to get this across with my paintings. A figure or architecture in the painting would change that; it would place it.

Tell us about your recent move to Tulbagh.

I have lived in the Cape Town City Bowl for the past 12 years. I was considering moving overseas, but my love for the mountain and the sea kept driving me back here. Going overseas seemed like a good opportunity, yet I wanted to be here. Tulbagh is a good place to reset and make decisions. I’m missing the ocean a lot. I wouldn’t choose to be in Tulbagh long term, I’d choose to be near the sea, so I’m deciding when to move back and to where, but it’s given me good perspective.

You painted an impressive three-story mural in Ukraine’s historic capital city of Kiev. Do you have one planned for Cape Town or South Africa?

I haven’t, but I’m looking into possibilities of doing one and am searching for a suitable wall (it would be relevant considering the Cape Town water crisis). [Jake was invited to the Ukraine by international public art organisation Art United Us, which plans to paint 200 walls around Ukraine.]

What’s next for Jake Aikman?

I have two exhibitions coming up. I’m more than likely going to spend some time on another lake north of Chicago up in Michigan, where a family friend has a cabin on Lake Michigamme. 

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Berlin-based, South African illustrator and painter Tara Deacon, who we previously featured here, is hosting an exhibition in Cape Town, entitled Close To Home.

Tara, whose creations usually explore the worlds of colour and nature, has decided to work in black-and-white with her latest body of work. The pieces, which focus on the idea of reclusion, belonging and what the concept of home means, are made up of a group of larger-scale paintings.

“A much anticipated European summer was not spent along a hot tropical beach or a far away land, but rather behind closed doors in my home and studio in Berlin,” explains Tara. “During this time my thoughts drifted between feelings of reclusion, finding a sense of self in the not-so-new place I call home, as well as small corners and still life’s of familiar scenes that gave me a sense of belonging.”

Close To Home runs from 8 February until 28 February 2018 at AHEM! Art Collective, 77 Lower Main Road, Observatory, Cape Town. The gallery is open Tuesdays to Fridays from 8am until 5pm and on Saturdays and Sundays from 9am until 3pm.

View more of Tara’s work at taradeacon.com.

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This informative video interview with artist Mario Andres Robinson discusses the expressive nature of his art and how it came to be.

The New Jersey native is well-known for his hauntingly beautiful realist paintings, which primarily focus on people living in the rural spaces of Alabama in the USA. He tells their personal stories through watercolours, oils and pastels.

For more information on Mario and to view more of his work, visit marioarobinson.com.

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Self-proclaimed reluctant artist and finger-painter Anastasia Pather creates semi-abstract artworks that are reflective of her explorative journey into her own sexuality, ethnicity, nationality and self.

Anastasia engages in an organic artistic process that allows for the shapes and surfaces of her artworks to develop through the viscosity of the mediums she uses, as well as the movements of her body. An abstract thinker with strong feminine awareness and thought-processes, we caught up with her to find out more about the brains behind the beauty.

You’re a self-proclaimed reluctant artist. How so?

Marlene Dumas is an artist, Shirin Neshat is an artist; they remind us to see and not just look. I am reluctant to give myself the same title because I think it’s something you earn and not something you fake. I am not there (yet).

Your unique finger-painting technique makes for an interesting, semi-abstract style. How did your relationship with finger-painting begin and why is it your preferred technique?

I don’t remember when I chose to be right-handed, I just don’t ever remember being left-handed. It is a similar thing to painting with my finger. It just feels stronger, more decisive and uninterrupted. I feel as if I am in the painting – like tracing the surface of your lover’s skin.

You describe your role as an artist as one that involves being a tastemaker and commentator. What do you mean by tastemaker and what commentary are you making with your work?

I wax and wane between having David Bowie confidence and crippling self-doubt. I certainly think artists play the role of tastemakers and commentators. When Lady Skollie presents her sex and her fashion as an art object she is changing things up similar to what Yayoi Kusama did to the polka dot and at times I think that by just being a South African, unmarried, female artist I’m challenging a stereotype even just within my extended family. But then sometimes I read this and think I should stop taking myself so seriously. It’s only art, but what a flipping spectacular thing it is.

Why would you say that your work is indulgent and self-absorbed?

My work is undeniably self-indulgent; I make it for myself but I love the action of doing it, because I feel most like myself when I am painting. Any abstract artist has to acknowledge that their work is self-absorbed because it comes from the self. I paint without a guide or a plan and let the paint pool and wrinkle organically. I then see certain images from that process and project or construct them further. I am currently working on a weaving project where I am cutting up rejected or tired paintings of mine and reworking them into something new. I see it as a reworking of myself as painter and a woman. You are the sum of (all) your parts, past rejected and admired.

Where and/or whom do you draw inspiration from?

Everything eventually makes it onto the canvas. Old flames, a really great rant in the traffic, remembering the Prosecco in Rome, the pastel palette and peeling paint of the art deco buildings in Durban. It’s a charmed life and I get to paint it.

Are you currently exhibiting and what’s next for you?

I have Cape Town Art Fair coming up, a solo show with 99 Loop Gallery later in the year and hopefully a little growth in style. Keep watching, I aim to please.

Keep up with Anastasia by following her on Instagram.

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