About Retha Buitendach

“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do” – Rumi

The insatiable need to make things that honour nature’s boundless beauty has been with me since childhood. As a child, I had great fun building things with flowers, twigs, and bits of throw-away cardboard and needlework scraps my mother collected in a box for us.

I guess this was the start of my calling to be an artist.

I studied Fine Art at the University of Pretoria, majoring in Sculpture and Drawing, and have been on a self-defined Art Journey ever since. My artworks have evolved through time to be an extension of my deep love and appreciation of the natural world. I use this as my guiding light whether I work with oil paint, ink drawing, digital art, photography, sculpture, or fibre art.

“I like films that leave room to dream…” – David Lynch

What David Lynch appreciates in film is also what I look for in a good artwork.

Whatever the medium, my artworks display a creative blend of surrealism, naturalism, and whimsical playfulness. I like working with intricate detail so that a deeper,  extended look at any artwork will reveal more to discover. My art materials can be anything from discarded garden refuse to the pip of a peach or the spark-plug from my last car service.

I like creating imaginary worlds with their roots firmly in our everyday life with our everyday objects.

I welcome all commissions and have made many unique pieces for clients looking for uniquely crafted painted

or sculpted artworks.

Since the early 1990’s, I have exhibited my art widely in group and solo exhibitions. In 2013 I was awarded an Art Residency at the Cite Des Arts in Paris, France, with my Oil Painting titled “Graaff-Reinet and the Underworld”

I currently live and work in the small town of Vanwyksdorp in the Klein Karoo region of South Africa.

It is a true honour to live in a landscape that is also the home of many lizards, scorpions, spiders, porcupines, and other miraculous creatures.