cWell-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’ Shool 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