Nicolaas Maritz is one of my favourite South African artists and you can see his work when you visit the Kalk Bay Modern Gallery.
Nicolaas paints using enamel paint and his subject matter is often the South African landscape. he uses shapes and colours and creatures that really are his unique style and signature. The more you see his work the easier it is to recognize it. He uses shape and colour with boldness and his work often has both reality and the magical or imagined together, side by side.
These two portrait works come from his most resent collection called 40 faces. These works were on exhibit as one exhibition and were extraordinary.
These portraits speak into the obsession with the Selfie and kind of explore the rather more realistic versions of people he has met over the years. These faces are meant to be more realistic than the fake kind of self reflection we see on social Media platforms.
Nicolaas grew up in an artistic family. His mother was a ceramic artist and worked with clay while his father was an architect. Do you remember what an architect does? He was surrounded by art and artists and his work has been influenced by his life growing up in SA as well as by the various artists he came into contact with.
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