SKY, SEA AND VELD

Dirt Road to Hanover, Karoo © Walter Voigt 2024

WALTER VOIGT’S PAINTINGS OF SOUTH AFRICA

by Paul Halas

While some painters need a sense of detachment to produce their best work, others can’t but help show a sense of intimacy with their subjects. This is mainly true with artists and their live models, but less often so with landscape painters. Walter Voigt is one of these exceptions; there is a deep connection between Voigt and the places he paints.

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Walter Voigt was born in Johannesburg in 1971, educated at Uplands Primary School, St Albans College, and Lowveld High School. He then majored in illustration at The Witwatersrand Technikon, Johannesburg. Enough of the formal stuff. The son of two artists, Voigt grew up in a remote area in the mountainous Lowveld Escarpment region, near Nelspruit in Mpumalanga, South Africa. Remote it may have been, but it was hardly a desolate wilderness, insofar as the Voigts were surrounded by nature and wildlife (particularly snakes, apparently).

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Not only did the Voigts live in amongst the flora and fauna of the region, they acted as conservationists as well, helping to stave off the advance of monoculture and the homogenisation of the area. Living so close to nature, in such a spectacularly beautiful setting, it’s not hard to see where the passion in Walter Voigt’s art comes from. Here is grandeur, scale, and sense of awe… yet also deep intimacy.

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The colours of the Lowveld are largely warm. Even when a painting shows a desolate area, with great spaces and vegetation that is only just hanging in there, there is almost a glow to the soil. Life is there, biding its time. Voigt shows it’s possible to feel a deep bond with a landscape at the same time as being almost intimidated by its openness. Skies can be warm or cool, but even when the heavens look frigid the earth contains warmth. Voigt’s palette is always generous, even when the subject might be seen as begrudging.

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Voigt’s seascapes are rather different, at least at first sight. Whites and blues dominate; water, wind and spray; there is immense power and energy in them all. We’re far from Voigt’s warm landscapes, here is a sea that’s subject to moods, sometimes benign and almost placid, at others raging with great swells, deep currents and crashing breakers. Even when the waves are piling in and the skies are leaden, however, there are still hints of warm colour. The rocks are still the same land. Storms always abate.

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Landscape painting is a great skill, and so is painting water. This is a skill that Voigt has mastered. The Impressionists, much as Monet and Sisley, recognised that while water is colourless it can reflect every colour under the sun, and that can include pure white. Both the seas and inland waters in Walter Voigt’s paintings demonstrate an understanding of treating water with equal importance to the rest of the composition.

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Painting with broad brushstrokes, but also using other tools of the trade, such as palette knives and oil sticks, gives Voigt’s paintings a liveliness and immediacy that belies the artist’s technical skill. There are obvious comparisons between his work and that of many of the Impressionists, and of course J M W Turner. But Voigt’s deep knowledge of the colours and textures of his native South Africa make his work unique.

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Voigt’s intimacy with his subject matter is the result of a childhood spent in the Lowveld, and deep knowledge of his country. His methodology is as follows: “My working method is quite simple. I work straight from photographs which I have taken on various travels around the country. I spend as much time as I need, immersing myself in the chosen landscape. It is as much if not more enriching to feel a sense of place before going about doing a painting. Photographs just give you the reference material. So I don’t paint outdoors or do any preliminary sketching. The painting gets done entirely back in the studio. I work up the overall composition quickly. This is usually the most important stage of painting. Once the composition or design is in place I will add more paint as I progress.”

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Those who have lived in or visited this part of the world feel an instant, almost visceral connection with these paintings. They are that powerful. The reproductions shown in this piece give a flavour of what Walter Voigt’s work is about, but of course that cannot compare with seeing the paintings themselves. An exhibition of the artist’s work will be on show from: 18th October to 16th November, at the Everard Read Gallery, 80 Fulham Road, London

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Paul Halas, the Arts and Lifestyle Editor of Ars Notoria and co-founder of AN Editions, is a writer of Jewish heritage whose escape from 1970s hippidom was the discovery that he could invent stories. He spent forty years contributing to various Disney magazines and books, as well as a variety of non-Disney comics, books and animated films. He has recently finished the second edition of his book The Rights of Man and Fish which will be launched at the Chapel Market Tavern On March 6th. Halas is a self described Humane Socialist.