JILL TRAPPLER at
Tatham Art Gallery in Pietermaritzburg
29 June to 23 July 2000.
Well-known Cape Town artist
and art educator, JILL TRAPPLER, will exhibit
a selection of her non-figurative paintings
at the Tatham Art Gallery, corner Longmarket
Street and Commercial Road, Pietermaritzburg,
opening at 6 pm on Thursday, 29 June and
running until Sunday, 23 July 2000.
Born in Benoni, Gauteng, in
1957, and educated at the Collegiate Girls’
School in Pietermaritzburg, Jill Trappler
studied at the Johannesburg Art Foundation
under Bill Ainslie and at UNISA. As a professional
weaver, she worked in Johannesburg and London,
and on Tristan de Cunha and St Helena Islands.
In addition to setting up printmaking and
paper mache employment projects, she initiated
weaving employment projects at the Philani
Nutrition Clinics in Crossroads and Khayelitsha.
She established the Dorman Street and Valkenberg
art studios and co-founded Greatmore Studios
in Woodstock. She has often participated
in and co-ordinated the Thupelo workshops,
both national and international, in Johannesburg
and at Community Arts Project (CAP), South
African National Gallery (SANG) and Robben
Island in the Cape. She has taught art extensively
at Federated Union of Black Artists, Baragwanath
Hospital, CAP, the Occupational Therapy
Department at Groote Schuur Hospital, University
of Cape Town Summer School, and from home
in Cape Town, where she now lives and works.
In addition to her professional
commitments, Trappler chairs the Artreach
committee of the Association For Visual
Arts (AVA) where she has served as the vice-chairperson
and is now the acting chair.
Trappler began exhibiting
on group shows in the late 1970s in South
Africa and abroad in Uganda, Germany, France,
USA, Australia, Luxembourg and Switzerland.
She has held four one-person exhibitions
and is currently preparing for her next
solo at AVA in January 2001. Her work is
represented in various public and corporate
art collections in South Africa, including
SANG, Investec and Vodacom, and in numerous
private collections worldwide.
Trappler works from visual
memory and her paintings focus on “abstraction”,
capturing the unconscious, intuitive, physical
and sensual world around us. Colour, scale
and surface are important to her and her
application of paint often results in a
tactile quality which gives her work a rich
sensuality while, at the same time, revealing
a delicate balance of form and structure.
Her works on paper often employ collage
to create a sense of relief, highlighting
shadow and the use of carefully chosen materials.
Above all, sensitivity and spontaneity are
the hallmarks of her works, which conceal
as much as they reveal, and encourage contemplation
by drawing in the viewer.
Trappler says of her works:
“I want my works of art to be generators
of energy – natural, spiritual energy
that continues to engage and inspire in
an attempt to perpetuate and nurture the
light and creativity that is in all of us.”
Gallery hours: Tuesday
to Sunday: 10 am to 6 pm.
Enquiries: phone: (033) 3421801
