Seaside cottage becomes former Eastern Cape artist’s sanctuary

Sunrays radiate through the stained glass of former Eastern Cape artist Sue Kaplan’s windows, illuminating the garden studio where she embellishes canvasses with compellingly expressive and intuitive brushstrokes.

Kaplan, who grew up near Gqeberha’s Pollok Beach, has practised art in multiple forms through many phases of her life.

She has been a textile designer, illustrator, poster designer for anti-apartheid organisations, art lecturer and art therapist in an addiction centre, but now she lives close to the sea in Fish Hoek, Cape Town, where she paints and teaches.

Painted indigo, her seaside cottage is a cosy sanctuary containing a padded orange male cat called Ruth, pot plants in floral enamel bowls, squashy cushions in the colours of jewels and soft throws that offer respite from the Cape’s harsh winter.

Art adorns every wall, even in the kitchen, which overlooks Kaplan’s lush garden oasis, where a pathway winds its way past a dappled pond to her studio.

I see art as an anchor in a very choppy sea; helping with focus, staying present and giving you a voice that is unique to your narrative

“I paint as much as I can in between teaching, gardening and walking my dog at the beach while the wind and sea jostle for centre stage.

“I currently give classes at Montebello Design Centre and at my home studio in Fish Hoek, as well as giving an online Zoom class.

“I see art as an anchor in a very choppy sea; helping with focus, staying present and giving you a voice that is unique to your narrative.

“It can be an escape and a homecoming,” says Kaplan, who moved to Cape Town in 2011 after a year of travelling through Central and South America.

For her, teaching art is more than just about passing on techniques; she also helps her students to express themselves and to find peace in the process.

“My classes allow students to continually evolve their practice where they have the time to experience the unfolding of a process and not reduce it to prescription or formula, allowing them to reach their fullest expression in a safe space with an experienced person to guide them.

“I teach them to look and think a bit differently, so that the purpose of art isn’t just to master a skill, but to find peace during the process as well.

“We use a number of techniques and media, using various mark-making exercises, helping to develop their own creative language.

“I build into the classes many different themes and ideas that we work with such as botanicals, portraits, figures, landscapes, abstract ideas and some contemporary processes too.”

Growing up in the 1960s and 70s in suburban Gqeberha, Kaplan became aware of the inequalities in South African society.

“I grew up during the height of apartheid. My family and I lived near the iconic Pollok Beach where we would insolently hang out wearing our school rebellion like a giant flag and then would go home to our comfortable suburban home.

“As a teen I became aware of the iniquities in our society and understood more about the fractured and dislocated lives my parents were witness to.”

As a child it dawned on her, not only that art was to play a central role in her life, but that it also encompassed healing qualities.

“I have memories of sitting and drawing at my desk during break aged six, while my friends all played outside.

“While I lacked interest in traditional subjects, I flourished in the art class and redeemed myself by finishing high school at Lawson Brown, which pioneered the amazing art school matric option starting in the 1970s.

“I have always been interested in narrating my story in a visual way, linking the tangible with the intangible.

“At the risk of entering the identity politic fray, my Jewish, white, female privilege intersected with the oppression in South Africa, though both my parents contributed towards change in many meaningful and important ways.

“My father was born in Port Elizabeth, only leaving to study, and my mom fled the bombs in London in the 40s to Zimbabwe and then to UCT where they met. They still live in Gqeberha in their 90s!”

Her work has been informed by her own background and the history of her family.

“Remembering and not forgetting was a common domestic refrain in our household, albeit us all living a secular life together.

“There were many migrant Jewish communities from Eastern Europe who had emigrated to the Eastern Cape, though the numbers have dwindled dramatically.

“So my life and work has been shaped by the stories and reflections of my diasporic family and the geography of home.

“For me, art mediates between the viewer and the person creating a cultural exchange of sorts.”

After school, Kaplan moved to Cape Town where she became a textile designer after studying a diploma in fine art at the Cape Technikon.

“But by 1981 my formative education began when I moved to Johannesburg to immerse myself in living in the iconic Crown Mines.

“My eyes were opened to communal living with a diverse group of committed South Africans, and where, with the proximity of the mine dust, I fell in love with Jozi and its people.”

While married and mothering a son, Kaplan lived in Yeoville in the 1980s and 90s where she worked as an illustrator, art teacher and underground poster designer for anti-apartheid organisations.

“I had worked at Katlehong Art Centre before my son’s birth and learnt much about community art centres and their important historical role. Their influence on me and my work is profound.”

Over the years Kaplan has stacked up an impressive list of qualifications and degrees, all associated with art, all aligning with the stages of her life journey.

Post-divorce she obtained an art therapy foundation course qualification with the Art Therapy Centre/Lefika La Phodiso NGO and ultimately an MA in fine art from Wits.

“During this time, I ran my own art school, lectured at places such as LISOF, as well as a long stint as an art teacher at Grantley College.”

Back in Cape Town in 2011, Kaplan built up her teaching practice while working as an arts therapist in addiction clinics.

“My paintings were becoming darker and darker during this time.

“As an antidote and to motivate my creative output I went back to university and completed an honours degree in curating at UCT.

“When Covid appeared I completed a Zen coaching course to add to the arsenal.

“I think these modalities have been really wonderful as a segway into new ways of creative explorations.”

Now, living on the coast in her storybook cottage, Kaplan divides her time between painting, teaching, gardening and walking her dog Frankie on the beach.

“My paintings and drawings are mostly made in response to encounters, sensations and explorations in my life.

I see art as an anchor in a very choppy sea, helping with focus, staying present and giving you a voice that is unique to your narrative

“I paint in a visceral, fairly intuitive way, like a sort of diary; more impulse than rigour, but still it engages my values and identity in the moment. 

“What emerges is a soothing balm — the meditative and immersive nature of the creative process, both in the teaching and within my own art making, is a welcome respite from the woes of the world.”

She has exhibited extensively, most recently in Kalk Bay’s 11 on Windsor and Cape Town centre’s 6 Spin Street, and also at Agassiz Gallery in Boston, US, in 2019.

“My work is held in a number of private collections, both locally and internationally.

“I see art as an anchor in a very choppy sea, helping with focus, staying present and giving you a voice that is unique to your narrative. It can be an escape and a homecoming.”

When the Daily Dispatch paid her a visit, Kaplan was in the process of packing a batch of her beautiful artworks to supply the StateoftheART Gallery, an online gallery that has been stocking her work for a few years.

Cupping her cat’s cushiony cheeks, Kaplan speaks enthusiastically about an inaugural open studio event she will be part of the first weekend of October.

“We will be a group of artists opening our studios in Fish Hoek and Clovelly. Please look on socials to see that. It promises to be amazing.”

• For more see suzi_artclass on Instagram.