Roeloff Rossouw - 1957

In the Docks

Summer Day

Monet'sTulips/Paris

Kalk Bay Harbour

About the Artist

Roeloff Rossouw was born in 1957 and grew up in Benoni, near Johannesburg. At the age of four he started drawing aeroplanes, and at the age of eight was drawing comics. His first oil painting was made when he was fourteen years old, just prior to moving to the Northern Cape where he completed his schooling at Kimberly Boys high School.
 

Style & Format

Rossouw finds potential, inspiration and material in everyday situations. The subject matter in Rossouw’s landscape art is not always grand or idyllic - quite the opposite. He observes the abstract shapes and exciting contrasts created by the sunlit and shadow areas of buildings - an old factory, a boat yard, a crowded street and farmlands.

These visual statements inspire him to capture them on canvas - like many artists Rossouw shows a fascinationn with dereliction. Rossouw’s paintings have something to do with mood, light and colour, trying to create a particular atmosphere and sense of time by reducing unnecessary detail to focus the attention on colour and the juxtaposition of colour.

"No work of art should be created with such finality that you need contribute nothing to it. You must recreate the work for yourself... You cannot look at a picture and find it beautiful by a merely passive act of seeing. The internal relations that make it beautiful to you have to be discovered and in some way have to be put in it by you. The artist provides a skeleton, he provides guiding lines and provides enough to engage your interest and to touch you emotionally. But there is no picture...unless you yourself enter it and fill it out."
- J. Bronowski - The Visionary Eye

"It is the artists function to examine, digest and interpret the surroundings, to give us ways in which to react to them, evaluate them and in various ways, to come to terms with them. The artist can point our beauty where there seems to be none, can intensify moods and qualities that reveal the means to see, enjoy and appreciate our conditions. The artist can help us to digest or grasp the welter of confusing forms that our increasingly built-up environment throws at us."
- Donald Stoltenberg - The Artist and the Built Environment

This South African artist has studied the works of contemporary artists such as Everett Raymond Kinstler, Bernard Dunstan and Ken Howard for years. Old masters who he has studied include Monet, van Gogh, Sisley, Sargent, Hugo Naude, Pierneef and Gregoire Boonziaier.

From these influences he has evolved his own style of Post Impressionism, and is one of the few South African artists to treat harsh light in a sensitive manner. Rossouw is adept at creating depth and texture in his pictures by using various methods of paint application- brush, palette knife and pusher.

Essentially Rossouw is a painter of figures, city and townscapes, landscapes, street scenes, marine and architecture - working mainly in oils, but also in collage, acrylic and mixed medium. The series of works depicting the wrecks at BIERA in Mozambique and the bustle of the V&A waterfront in Cape Town are particularly delightful.

You can purchase South African landscape art by Roeloff Rossouw now. Simply contact Fine Art Portfolio on info@fineartportfolio.co.za or +27 (0)21 551 1528