LIENKIE LOMBARD

Lienkie Lombard was born in Pretoria in 1949 as the first child (of six) to Dr Jan Richter, and raised in what was then the Western Transvaal. She matriculated at Hoërskool Rustenburg while the family lived at the Derdepoort missionary station on the Botswana border. She read for a B.A. Fine Arts degree at the University of Pretoria where she graduated in 1971. She married Nico Lombard while still studying. Nico’s work commitments meant that much of her life was spent traveling with her family from small town to larger city across South Africa. They have now settled in Leeupoort, in the Thabazimbi area.

Lienkie does a lot of nature and still-life in oil and water and has also experimented with Sjablone, spray technique and other art materials to create an interesting effect. Experimenting with various media and techniques led to create bird studies on her then medium-of-choice, rice paper. Her rice paper birds series was so amazingly popular with the public, that she ended up spending all her creative time on them. She stopped the rice paper work to concentrate on what has now become her signature genre: children at play and rustic, romanticized farm scenes: boys kicking a ball or flying a kite, girls dressing up outsize posh frocks, and siblings frolicking in the waves.

Lienkie uses her art as escapism and to revisit the nostalgia of childhood. In this fast-food world, loosing oneself for a while in the forgotten reminiscence of childhood memories is perhaps not a bad thing: “My work is an effort to capture a little beauty that got lost and forgotten in this fast life and bring it back,” she says.

Artwork of Lienkie Lombard exhibited at Crouse Art Gallery. Original art of more than 60 top South African Artists – Since 1999.