Love a Little Local: A surprise round every corner

A surprise round every corner

Writer Elaine Davie

The first thing you notice about self-taught artist, Antoinette Coetzee is her smile. Its warmth and spontaneity not only lights up her own face, but reaches into the darkest corners of the environment around her. There is no doubt about it, this is a Giver.

And so she turns out to be – a spreader of kindness. Raised in Bloemfontein, Antoinette knew from the youngest age that she was born to be an artist, like her mother and grandmother, but there was a caveat: “I knew that art had been given to me as a gift to share with all; that it wasn’t just a means to make money, it was to give away to others for their pleasure and happiness,” she explains.

As a child, she wasn’t able to take art classes, but she painted pictures for her friends at school and the more she painted, the more she learnt. Her friends decided she should have a distinctive branding and conferred the name, Amira (meaning Princess in Arabic) on her, which she still uses as her nom de plume (or, perhaps, nom d’art). Because of her deep love of animals and the natural environment, she now categorises herself as a conservation artist.

Arriving in Betty’s Bay in 2019 and then in Kleinmond, she was overwhelmed by the beauty of the region. However, she knew nobody, so she decided the best way to reach out to the wider community was through art, and specifically rock art, which was gaining popularity all over the world. If that term conjures up ancient caves with walls covered in San art, you would be wrong.

Click on the newspaper below to read more (see page 9).