She loves the veld and nature. As a child she spent her school holidays on a farm in the bushveld near Baltimore, where her father farmed with Afrikaner stud cattle. Where most children went on sea holidays, holidays for her meant walking in the veld, studying the dung beetles and ants at work, hearing the call of the hornbill and looking at the star filled skies above the “braaivleis” fire at night. The spectacular spectrum of colours displayed by nature was imprinted in her brain during those childhood years.
Mariana always wanted to paint but being an artist was not in those days seen as a career by her parents. She studied in the economics and commercial sciences and started as a teacher in mathematics but soon followed a career of thirty years as a lecturer in Economics at the Universities of Pretoria and Unisa respectively. When she was 47years old she could no longer suppress the longing to be creative and with the children at that stage studying or in high school she, with the encouragement of her husband, qualified herself as an interior design and decorating consultant. Mariana then had her own interior decorating and design company in Pretoria for many years.
It was only after moving to Prince Albert in 2014 that she found the time to live out her life-long dream of becoming a full-time painter and artist. Mariana has no formal art education. However, she did a painting course with Dale Elliott and attended a few workshops by Erika van Zyl.
Medium: Oil on stretched canvas
Mariana Botha: “Light is my inspiration”
Painting to me is a way to escape, that is to meditate. I try to capture the simple beauty of elements that surround me either in a still life or in nature. Light is my inspiration and often it is just in the way the light falls on an object that attracts my attention. But light also displays the amazing and spectacular colours that nature reveals and I like to capture these beautiful colours in my paintings. Colour and light to me is symbolic of hope and life itself.
“My aim is to give hope and to inspire others through my art”.
Mariana is married to Louis Botha, a photographer. Louis and Mariana have 3 sons who are happily married and they are blessed with three grand-children. The two of them travel a lot and that is when Mariana takes her own photographs from which she paints.
Contact Mariana on 082 4500 513
