Our Millgate Art Gallery is proud to feature resident as well as local artists
The Kwa-Zulu Natal Midlands is an inspirational haven for artists and crafters, and a feast for art lovers.
The Millgate Art Gallery provides a showcase for just a few of the many talents in the area, including resident artists Jean-Marie Temkin and Ben Temkin, for whom the gallery was a dream for many years.
Jean already had an impressive history of solo and group exhibitions of her work in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Zimbabwe and South Africa, before the Temkins acquired and moved to Millgate Cottage. Ben had sold several of his works to private art collectors. Their as yet un-shown works were planned as a body for display at the new gallery.
Jean and Ben are two of the many artists who were taught and nurtured by the late Bill Ainslie.
Ben’s landscape and figurative work is impressionist. He interprets colour and form and much of his work explores the contrast of earth and water. People and animals often feature as part of the composite impression. Light, colour and shape are the elements of his work.
Jean finds inspiration in expressing thoughts, ideas and imagination and transforming this expression into colourful, vibrant imagery with oil on canvas. Her unique evocation of the human form and nature is inspired by Picasso and Magritte. Some of her work is unashamedly derived from and attributed to this inspiration. These particular works are not just a tribute but provide a personalised vision of her creative process and a further exploration of the marks already made by artists in the past.
Often a single male or female model provides her with a wide range of perspective imagery. One colour is sometimes used to transform into an interplay of physical forms, boldly exposing an exciting visual insight of her personal expression. The first work may be reiterated by others, before she moves to another idea. Perhaps this time the work becomes a surreal fusion of a rose and the body. Or a still life of proteas becomes a startling and vivid dramatic image of colour and shape.
She explores further beyond oil and canvas, into her expression with clay, copper beating and patchwork quilts, each work extraordinarily unique and personal.