steve cranko

My journey with art is a somewhat unusual. I have always been in love with sculpture, feeling the forms and shapes from very young. My father was an architect and had a fair number of arty friends so I was exposed from very young to a creative world growing up in South Africa. Through the years I have always taken photos, been fascinated with light, shapes and skylines and in the mid ’70s, having had my first exposure to screen printing and photography at the Free Acadamy of Art in the Hague in the Netherlands.

I started and operated silkscreen studio in the Hague for some years and though producing a few creative prints at the time I ended up doing a fair bit of commercial printing and eventually packed it in for a degree in computer science. This meant that any artistic aspirations were put on hold for many years.

Having lived for years in the Netherlands, Boliva and later Curacao I returned to Cape Town in about 2008 where I started a journey in re-discovering my love for sculpture via ceramics (something I had been putting off for years). Ceramics evening sessions at the Joubert School of Art where Ian Pells was the facilitator for adult classes was where I started. At this time, purely by fluke I adventured into oil painting. Without any lessons I discovered to my surprise that I could paint pleasing, lifelike portraits. I strengthened this skill at Swains Yard Studio under the gentle guidance of Paul Birchall, where I learned, amongst other things, about
mixing colours.

My journey continues.