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FROM her studio atop a house in Westford Downs, Knysna, Carmen Copestake paints into

oil painting on canvas, producing images that are both original and extraordinary.

Copestake home looks out on to rustic countryside set beneath the rugged outline of the Outeniqua Mountains; she has a rich library of travel and experience to draw upon in melding her art.

At the recent exhibition of the Art Barn at the Old Gaol Gallery in Knysna, Copestake self portrait oil painting was the show stopper that carried all before it.

Copestake grew up on a cherry farm in Ficksburg, in the lee of the Maluti Mountains of Lesotho. She went on to gain a BA in drama from the University of Stellenebosch and subsequently worked for the Performing Arts Council of the Orange Free State (Pacofs). At Pacofs Copestake acted the entire repertoire of theatre from classical painting drama to the work of contemporary playwrights. After her three children had grown to adulthood, Copestake relocated to Knysna in 2001, there to raise a brush in anger for the first time!

She has travelled widely to North Africa, the Galapagos Islands, Russia and the Middle East, climbed Tanzania Mount Kilimanjaro and Annapurna in the Himalayas and trekked through Nepal, Tibet and Madagascar.

Copestake has taken art instruction with Sue Kemp in Gauteng and Harvey Rothschild in Knysna.

othschild always encourages me to  more adventurous with your colour, take the painting futher??said Copestake. yourself out of the painting, out of the action and allow guidance to take over is what he tells me?

Copestake paints in a lovely, roomy, sunlit studio with distant 360 views of the Knysna Lagoon and distant mountains with the garden below. She paints to music by Mozart and Vivaldi, such that a quiet divertimento can suddenly give way to a concerto for lute and strings. It all adds muscle to the finished brushstrokes of her work..

On the day I met with Copestake we first talked art and artists over a splendid luncheon at de Pain, Thesen Harbour Town, before repairing to her studio where the work in progress was a large still life oil painting. The composition and disposition of the objects in Copestake still life painting

breaks all the ground rules of classical art. But that is half the charm of her work and anyway rules are made to be broken!

In her still life studies, Copestake thrusts the objects apart into the corners and on to the edges of the painting; planes of view and surfaces are cut up and rearranged at will and just occasionally there are suggestions of cubist geometry. The oil painting is smacked on in powerful slabs within strong outlines, resulting in a mosaic of form and colour that is quite delightful.