Scats Esterhuyse

Scats Esterhuyse matriculated from The School of Art, Ballet, Drama and Music in Parktown in 1970. He is a self-taught artist, being inspired by the likes of Luigi Loir, George Innis and William Turner. He was exposed to art as a young boy by his brother Frans Esterhuyse the cartoonist for the Beeld. He became a professional fine artist in 1996, after many years as a professional drummer and percussionist. He has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions as well as completing commissions for numerous art collectors.

Genre

Scats Esterhuyse has been described by Michael Coulson of The Financial Mail as that between the photo-realism of John Meyer and the broader impressionism of Walter Meyer.

The sensitivity and character of Scats Esterhuyse’s landscape paintings result in artworks beyond realistic landscape painting, with each artwork representing the character of the South African landscape, towns and people. He has travelled extensively across South Africa together with his wife, Sharon over the last sixteen years (1996-2012) and one can see his appreciation of the South African Landscape in his canvases.

Scat’s travels throughout South Africa have been a continuous search to portray the character and identity of the landscapes, towns and its people. His travels throughout the Karoo have extended to various small towns. Further down to the Western Cape he has travelled to dorpies such as Riebeek-Kasteel and Wellington. In 2007 he extended his palette towards the Drakensberg Mountain Range.

Scat’s spiritual journey and life’s experience is portrayed in his paintings.

"deals with compositions and imagery of imposing and awe-inspiring nature. In relation to the Sublime, the Picturesque was a term introduced at the same time to describe paintings which induced emotions in the viewer when looking at an artwork. The Picturesque was typically of a barren or rural countryside and refers specifically to the portrayal of nature in art. Esterhuyse represents the South African landscape with a discretion and sensitivity that allows his subject matter to develop a definitively Sublime and Picturesque aesthetic. Selected Esterhuyse works reveal an untainted beauty in the contemporary South African rural environment and evoke an emotional response relating to the landscape and traditional settlements which he depicts. Esterhuyse’s use of brushwork has evolved in his most recent body of work, however, and largely consists of the lighter, impressionistic qualities achieved with short, thick brushstrokes in the paint application, capturing the essence of the subject. This deliberate shift into a more impressionistic painting method draws."

"upon the use of the thicker layering of paint, which steps away slightly from Esterhuyse’s usual treatment. He also plays with the emphasis of natural light and adeptly portrays how colours reflect from each object in his compositions. Some of the most successful works in this new exhibition pay close attention to the effects desoir: the appearance of light during the fading twilight hours of the early evening. The progression in the development of Esterhuyse’s painting technique has created a body of work that has a fresh and vibrant overview. His inherent understanding of the nature of South Africa’s geological and ecological formations has resulted in a new collection of works that illustrates this personal insight and demonstrates his proficiency as one of South Africa’s most distinguished contemporary landscape artists. His perpetual fascination with the local landscape is apparent in all his works, which view the empyreal nature of the country’s land formations and the subtle effect of human presence in bucolic areas. A Journey Untold relates to the South African landscape on a humanistic and personal level, allowing the viewer to place themselves within the scene before them and to relate to it on both a physical and spiritual level.

This latest exhibition represents the physical and introspective journey that he has taken in his career, with his family and within himself. The relationships in his life and the extended connections to the world around him motivated him to do this. Esterhuyse also paid especial interest to the verdant and picturesque region of the South African Cape winelands, centring on the historical wine estate Boschendal: one of the oldest wine estates in Franschoek, with a heritage that dates back several centuries. Born in Johannesburg in 1954, Scats Esterhuyse is a self-taught artist. He has shown in solo exhibitions at the Karen McKerron Art Gallery from 1998 – 2000, participated in a group exhibition arranged by the Croatian Embassy in 2004 and held three exhibitions at Graham’s Fine Art Gallery