The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things,
but their inward significance.
Alain Nortje is a well-known art lecturer and international award-winning professional artist.
His awards include Artist of the Year: KUESTA; Artist of the Year: Centurion Art Society (4 times); and finalist: South African New Signatures Competition. In 1998 one of his paintings was chosen to represent SA at the World Expo in Lisbon.
Alain obtained a BA (Ed) Fine Arts degree at the University of Pretoria in 1983. He started as an art teacher, became a college lecturer, and in 1990 opened Alain’s Art and Frame.
His work is represented in several corporate collections (eg Telkom, ABSA), educational institutions, city councils, and private collections locally and abroad. Apart from selected upper-market galleries in South Africa (such as Johan Smit, Tugwell, Tina Skukan, Art & More, and Blue Ivy) and the National Art Museum in Pretoria, renowned galleries in Salzburg, Munich, and Vienna are currently exhibiting his work.
Although his style is diverse, Alain’s fascination with South African landscapes, and with specific reference to man-made marks on the landscape, forms the main theme throughout his work. Physical boundaries (such as rusted barbed wire fences) occur regularly in his paintings and relate to both boundaries found in landscapes, as well as mental boundaries that the artist might be confronted with.
Some of Alain’s works
