About The Artist

Thelma van Rensburg was born in Pretoria, South-Africa in 1969. She has studied and travelled extensively. The artist has always had an interest in art, but did not pursue it as a career until 2000.. She has a B.A Hons. Degree in Physical education and Psychology. In 2004 she decided to study art full time and received her B.Tech/ Honours degree in 2007 and majored in Printmaking and Painting. Her thesis focused on the Postmodern Identity, which she passed with distinction My work deals with the Gaze,thus woman being the object of the gaze of men. This also refers to the seminal book of John Berger Way’s of seeing in which he states: "Men dream of women. Women dream of themselves being dreamt of. Berger further solidifies this relationship of the power of presence of men and women by drawing on the interpretation of the presence of women. "A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman.