Marlise Keith
Marlise Keith was born in Christiana in 1972, and is currently living in Cape Town.
From the Artist
‘My interest in the technical aspects of markand art making directs most of my works in their initial stages. InTeam Sanity, I have been interested to see how I could manipulate line& colour, to stack & overlap images which would create a busy& seemingly chaotic surface, while the challenge was for the workto remain ‘readable’ to the viewer. It turned out to be quite astrenuous mental & visual exercise complicated further by layers of‘meaning’.
‘Team Sanity was a result of my effortto create & dismember my current existence, influences by people,the newspaper & general society. Most of the images I drawrepresent my astonishment with this carnival called life. My work isnarrative laid bare, because sometimes one has to grin and bare a life,and sanity is hard-earned.’
Academic
1995: BA, Fine Arts Degree at the University of Pretoria, at the top of class.1998 - 2002: Masters in Fine Arts, at the University of Stellenbosch, which was completed in March 2002. Keith’s thesis was entitled Fugitive Pieces, Reclaiming the Boundaries of Womanhood, accompanied by her first solo exhibition, also entitled Fugitive Pieces – a title borrowed from Ann Michaels’s novel Fugitive Pieces, published in Great Britain by Bloomsbury, 1998.
Enrichment
2002: Keith did a Trauma Counselling course presented by Tracy Woods in October, to better equip her as an Art teacher to deal with her learners’ problems. Due to the personal nature of the subject she teaches, many learners confide in her.2003: She attended a six-week course at AFDA, in film-making. This focused on Production Design and Cinematography and was completed in October.
Competitions
1995: The Thembisa Fine Arts Awards, Kempton Park, and the Sasol New Signatures, Pretoria1996: The Volkskas Atelier, Pretoria, and the Sasol New Signatures, Pretoria.
1997: The Sasol New Signatures, Pretoria.
2006: Two works were selected for the ABSA L’Atelier.
2006: Winner of the Sanlam Vuleka Art Competition.
2007: Selected for the ABSA L’Atelier.
