“I live with eyes wide open, always absorbing situations, people, places, animals and so much more,” says local artist Gretha Helberg.Born in Zimbabwe, she was 2 years old when her family moved to Pretoria, but her family often made trips back home.
Helberg, always inquisitive, was curious about art from age 4 already. “I tried to draw the Victoria Falls, because it had made such a tremendous impact on me, even though I was still so young,” she said. “I also remember drawing figures in my granddad’s cornfields near Rayton, and then I buried the drawings in the sand.”Helberg studied graphic design at the then Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, and obtained her degree in 1998. Afterwards she worked at various print and design houses in Gauteng, to gain experience before starting her own graphic design agency, Gradico, in 2000.
Branding businesses was a key aspect of her work, doing the corporate branding for such clients as Mercedes-Benz Centurion, Lear Corporation and African Bank. All the while Helberg missed creating art and made the move to the West Coast to be a full-time artist.Living her dream, she focuses mainly on three types of art – oil-on-canvas, encaustic art and polymer etchings. She uses large brushes when executing her oil-on-canvases. “Using the large brushes I can express the emotion on the canvas more,” she explains.In encaustic art Helberg applies melted beeswax mixed with powder pigment to a wooden surface using a hot torch, which she finds is a very therapeutic kind of art. “I love the abstract images I create in this type of art,” she points out.
One thing Helberg cannot function without in her studio is inspirational music, which gets her creative juices flowing.One art piece that has been a tremendous source of pride to her is “Immeasurable”, an oil-on-canvas seascape she exhibited at the Florence Biennale in Italy in October 2019, and is now on exhibit at Pergola in Radicondoli, Tuscany.Helberg’s goal is to have her work exhibited in France, Paris and New York, and quite simply to create more beautiful art.To find out more about her art, people can visit her website, www.grethahelberg.com.
