A Dove Mandala (2024) Drawing by Marjolein Gamble

I was born and raised in The Netherlands soon after world-war two by two different families as my mother died when I was five years old. I arrived in Cape Town, alone, at the age of 17 in the middle of the sixties, straight out of High School. I am still living here!

Most of my life I have taught children at both preprimary and preparatory level, which included a lot of arts and crafts. I developed creative moving toys with woodwork equipment and machinery with adults and disadvantaged youth over the years, much of it painted and with simple mechanical movements. I spent a year at Emerson College, (Sussex, U.K.) in 1974 learning woodwork and doing watercolor painting amongst other things.

I am, since 1996, teaching yoga in my own home-studio. In 2013 I started “carte-blanche” a design business using local African fabrics with the objective of creating work for local seamstresses and artisans. This came to an end with the Pandemic in early 2020. In 2016 I wrote and illustrated my own children’s story: “The little Lemon Tree that stood.”

After a lifetime of teaching others arts and crafts the Pandemic afforded me the opportunity to clear my “carte-blanche” studio and get back to my own artistic endeavours. I started with pencils (as I had designed bright blank cards and note-books in colourful pencil designs for “carte-blanche)”. It was a natural extension and new as I had done wood carving in the past.

• Nationality: SOUTH AFRICA
• Date of birth : 1948
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary South African Artists