About Me
Eileen van der Merwe grew up on a forest station in Cape Town, South Africa. She went on to study Anthropology and African Studies at the University of Stellenbosch situated in the Cape Winelands. She married a prospecting geologist in 1990 and since then has been dragged all over the world. Eileen has lived in a caravan on the West Coast of Namaqualand, a tent in the Kaokoveld in the Namib Desert and has been charged by elephants and rhino. She has raised and home-schooled her two kids in the most unusual and isolated of conditions close to the shores of Lake Victoria and boarded rickety ferries in Tanzania crossing that very lake. Their sea worthy capabilities were at most times questionable and Eileen and her family usually perched on the top of their Landover during the crossing in the event of a hasty exit. Now, fourteen moves and 5 countries later, she lives on the edge of the Empty Quarter, or the Rub’ al Khali, as they call it here in the United Arab Emirates.
All of this has nothing to do with painting; except that all these unusual life experiences have been imprinted on Eileen’s canvasses. The rich desert colours, the vibrancy of the tropical flowers, all her paintings communicates her connection to the land and nature. Each place she has lived came with its own struggles and adjustments, sights, sounds, smells, textures, peoples and culture. Painting is Eileen’s way of getting to know her new environment. Her ability to communicate all of this through granular sculptural textures, three dimensional application of paint and striking use of color makes her work bold and engaging. Her work clearly establishes her credibility as an observer. The Arabian Gulf, mountains of Oman, and vast expanses of desert are current themes in her work.
Juxtaposed to dramatic landscapes shimmering with the heat of the Middle East, Eileen finds relief painting close-ups of flowers, bursting with color and life. Often resorting to large formats for flower studies, a single petal could take her many hours to paint. Except for taking art as a subject through high school, Eileen is self taught. As a result you will find her work exuberant, free of convention and full of honesty.
Eileen van der Merwe grew up on a forest station in Cape Town, South Africa. She went on to study Anthropology and African Studies at the University of Stellenbosch situated in the Cape Winelands. She married a prospecting geologist in 1990 and since then has been dragged all over the world. Eileen has lived in a caravan on the West Coast of Namaqualand, a tent in the Kaokoveld in the Namib Desert and has been charged by elephants and rhino. She has raised and home-schooled her two kids in the most unusual and isolated of conditions close to the shores of Lake Victoria and boarded rickety ferries in Tanzania crossing that very lake. Their sea worthy capabilities were at most times questionable and Eileen and her family usually perched on the top of their Landover during the crossing in the event of a hasty exit. Now, fourteen moves and 5 countries later, she lives on the edge of the Empty Quarter, or the Rub’ al Khali, as they call it here in the United Arab Emirates.
All of this has nothing to do with painting; except that all these unusual life experiences have been imprinted on Eileen’s canvasses. The rich desert colours, the vibrancy of the tropical flowers, all her paintings communicates her connection to the land and nature. Each place she has lived came with its own struggles and adjustments, sights, sounds, smells, textures, peoples and culture. Painting is Eileen’s way of getting to know her new environment. Her ability to communicate all of this through granular sculptural textures, three dimensional application of paint and striking use of color makes her work bold and engaging. Her work clearly establishes her credibility as an observer. The Arabian Gulf, mountains of Oman, and vast expanses of desert are current themes in her work.
Juxtaposed to dramatic landscapes shimmering with the heat of the Middle East, Eileen finds relief painting close-ups of flowers, bursting with color and life. Often resorting to large formats for flower studies, a single petal could take her many hours to paint. Except for taking art as a subject through high school, Eileen is self taught. As a result you will find her work exuberant, free of convention and full of honesty.