Two daisies

Bright flowers, whose home is everywhere

Bold in maternal nature’s care

And all the long year through the heir

Of joy and sorrow,

Methinks that there abides in thee

Some concord with humanity,

Given to no other flower I see

The forest through.

- William Wordsworth

Acrylic on primed canvas panel – 9″ × 12″

Some left-over blue paint from my palette when I did the lighthouse. I couldn't just waste the paint so  I was off on a new adventure again with my acrylics! 

Two daisies from my garden (Tarlton, Gauteng, South Africa) in a blue bottle on my kitchen table.

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Moonlit beach

"When the storm is over and night falls and the moon is out in all its glory and all you're left with is the rhythm of the sea, of the waves, you know what God intended for the human race, you know what paradise is."
- Harold Pinter

A daily practice of sketching and painting gives you a chance to exercise the big three P's - practice, practice, practice!


Acrylic on primed Acrylic un-stretched Canvas - 12" x 9" - Maree©

Today, or should I say tonight, is full moon and like many artists, I am quite fascinated by the phases of the moon. The shape varies from a full moon (when the Earth is between the sun and the moon) to a new moon (when the moon is between the sun and the Earth). When two full moons occur in a single month, the second full moon is called a "Blue Moon." Another definition of the blue moon is the third full moon that occurs in a season of the year which has four full moons (usually each season has only three full moons). A full moon appears as an entire circle in the sky. The full moon is given different names, depending on when it appears. For example, the "Harvest moon" is the full moon that appears nearest to the Autumnal Equinox, occurring in late September or early October.

This is one of my few forays into Acrylics and I really enjoyed working on this one.

Cosmos swaying in the breeze

A daily practice of sketching and painting gives you a chance to exercise the big three P's - practice, practice, practice!


Cosmos - watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm - 11" x 7.5"

"Bright flowers, whose home is everywhere
Bold in maternal nature's care
And all the long year through the heir
Of joy and sorrow,
Methinks that there abides in thee
Some concord with humanity,
Given to no other flower I see
The forest through."
- William Wordsworth

The show of Cosmos in Tarlton (Gauteng, South Africa) this year was fabulous! They stretched next to the road-sides for kilometers and extended into ploughed fields, swaying pink, lilac, white and cerise in the wind. Nature puts up this grand show every year from November, well into March, and tourists travel from the Cape Province to Mpumalanga to witness this spectacular event.

Cosmos are originally native to scrub and meadow areas in Mexico (where the bulk of the species occur), the southern United States (Arizona, Florida), Central America, South America south to Paraguay and South Africa.

Well-guarded Secret

“Secrets are made to be found out with time.”
- Charles Sanford

A daily practice of sketching and painting gives you a chance to exercise the big three P's - practice, practice, practice!


Watercolour in my Moleskine Folio 200gsm Watercolour sketch-book - 12" x 8" - Maree©

About 20 kilometers down the road from us, lies the area of Honingklip, a rural area now densely populated as progress has spread slowly but surely from Roodepoort (Gauteng, South Africa) on its way West towards Tarlton. Twenty years ago this area was still "in the country", now it's a stone's throw from major highways and shopping centres.

Yet, not far off the main road, lies this hidden little secret - a beautiful pond known only to the most avid of fishermen and lovers of nature. Sitting on the grass at the edge of the pond, one can hardly believe that you're just minutes from civilisation, as Reed Cormorants dry themselves on the branches of an old, dead tree and ducks serenely cruise the water, ever on the lookout for something to eat.

We visited here not so long ago, and as the men sat chatting and enjoying their beers, I sketched a corner of the scene.

First Light

early dawn | two-note, two note | who are you?
A Twitter poem from WATERMARK


"First Light" - Acrylic on Canvas board - Maree©

This was one of my first ventures into Acrylics. I've only done another 2 or 3 since then, and will get around to posting them some time or another.

Sunrise or sunset in the Kalahari Desert in the Cape Province of South Africa is always a spectacular affair. Here I have tried to capture the mystery of the desert as the sun rises over a landscape of golden grass and small red dunes.

The name Kalahari is derived from the Tswana word Kgala, meaning "the great thirst", or Khalagari, Kgalagadi or Kalagare, meaning "a waterless place". The Kalahari desert is part of the huge sand basin that extends some 900 000 square kilometers from the Orange River up to Angola, in the west to Namibia and in the east to Zimbabwe. The sand masses were created by the erosion of soft stone formations. The wind shaped the sand ridges, which are so typical of the landscape in the Kalahari.

In the southern Kalahari desert, which is the driest part, the Kalahari desert takes the form of a stationary dune veld. To the East and to the North of this, the Kalahari desert becomes a flat park-like terrain or savannah.

The Kalahari is not a true desert as it receives too much rain, but is actually a fossil desert.