Izak Geldenhuys has been painting for the greater part of his life. He was born in 1958 in the
town of Kroonstad, Free State Province and matriculated at Grey College, Bloemfontein in 1976.
He practised as an attorney and later as an advocate but in 2009 he became a full time artist.
During the period from the 1990s to the present he regularly undertook extensive trips through
Southern Africa to places such as Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania.
He has held two exhibitions in 2006 and 2007 respectively and the themes of these exhibitions mainly
dealt with the scenes of these trips.
Izak prefers places where there are no or few people and
he often works in the open such as the bush or desert, painting the odd sand dune, gemsbok or
Nguni cattle.
The artist has recently enrolled as a full time student in Fine Arts at the Tshwane University
of Technology in order to develop as an artist and in order to enable him to improve the meaning
and content of his work.
He is currently in his third year and he has won the prize at this
institution of best student, Fine and Applied Arts, for the year 2011.
His style has developed from impressionistic to exactness and precision or realism. In his
latest work, he began departing from the traditional landscape and wild life scenes and started
to depict people and the emotions they experience during their everyday lives, concentrating also
on his own state of mind after his motorcycle accident in 2008 as well as his family history.
The latest of his works are part of his Anglo Boer War series. |
