10 Questions with Sharmaine Thérèsa Pretorius

Sharmaine is a high-end, South African artist who has been living in the Sultanate of Oman for the past ten years, deep inside the desert in Nizwa, a mystical ancient Arabic city known for a tree that has a talking ‘’jinn’’ as well as a fort-building which is said to have just appeared according to locals, by no human hand. She has been described as the ‘’Essence of an extraordinary, gifted mind’’ by Faces Oman magazine because of her prodigally styled intellect and intricate artistic drawings, including hidden puzzles and musical compositions.

She holds more than 600 continuous educational credits spanning neurological psychology, medical and forensic science, aviation mechanics and management, as well as multi-cultural mediation and negotiation and adaptability, spread over the safety and security, health, and emergency service fields of which none includes art.

She gained international recognition as an emerging artist in 2017, particularly for her drawing named ‘Mars Trojan – Elon – The Shroud (5517A)’, from her first solo exhibition in Oman, circling in low space orbit on the Asgardia-1 nanosat cube, with one other work of art.
Over the years, she has exhibited her work extensively, in both solo and group exhibitions, in Oman, Europe and South Korea.
She is currently involved in a digital treasure hunt for her second solo exhibition named; ‘Enclosure Fathom – Part 2’, with collectors worldwide. The exhibition will go to auction soon with 77 digital works of art. Her crazy story about ‘The Blue Car’ has also gained a following online by artists and collectors alike.

artshowroom.org | @sharm.t.p

ARTIST STATEMENT

Sharmaine creates blueprint, mixed media drawings of her dreams. Then her work gets photographed, and she uses kaleidoscopic computer software to produce digital art copies of the original work. She is a process artist. Each of her artworks includes Chladni musical compositions, puzzles, space, and environmental exploration issues as topics. The artist has a special interest in the curing and addressing of PTSD in war and trauma victims, using art, music, and color. Her multi-faceted art explores how it can address security sector reform issues experienced in the aviation and harbor security sector, in which she specializes as well. Her interests overlap with intercultural relations in the art world regarding religions, personal paradigms, and philosophy. She is an artist who actively works to empower Africa through free education.

Bluetooth – Entropy – Fears Of C. V. 19, Drawing, 40.6cm x 29.6 cm, 2020 © Sharmaine Thérèsa Pretorius

INTERVIEW

First of all, why are you an artist, and when did you first decide to become one?

The process happened spontaneously. We lived in a small town, Geochang - Gun, in South Korea from 2007 to 2010. My husband, Willem, brought me some wooden cubes, paper, paint, pencils, and koki pens to draw and paint with. One university I had studied at couldn't find me on their system for 6 months. I had my laptop and the art utensils, just waiting for my academic records.
It took months, if not years, to fully realize I was copying my dreams and the holographic memories entangled with me, on a quantum field level. When I met advocate Ben Ewing of CMS (Law) Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang LLP to ask if he would represent me legally during 2017, I wanted to do an exhibition.
He looked through my work and kept quiet for a long time. He said it would be a privilege, BUT ONLY if I started owning my art. It took a long, long time. I went through years of doing art, connecting with collectors in Asia, etc. but somehow, because I had always been surrounded by excellent art and artists, I not once thought of myself as an artist.

What is your personal aim as an artist?

It is a privilege when anybody likes to share what I have to share in my artwork. We bought a house/property in Bulgaria we are slowly developing into an artist retreat. I would love people to just visit there and feel free to just go and draw, share and stay there. My aim is to connect with others and explore the field of the quantum entanglement of human consciousness some more and to help with the education of artists, particularly from Africa, and document their work.

And how would you define yourself as an artist?

The more time I spend with other artists from different genres and backgrounds, the more I believe that artists are like the universe's 'Earlybird' communication system on a quantum level. I am a receiver-process artist, forwarding what I have downloaded from the spiritual realm/Universe/ call it what you like.

You have an interesting background and many different life experiences. Where do you get inspiration from for your work?

I copy my dreams mostly when I draw. It is a very intuitive process. That is where I extract the blueprints from - but I don't fight the status quo at all costs. If I just draw what I dream, it may take several months sometimes, but soon enough, a theme or themes in my work will present themselves.

I can easily identify whom I was influenced by or what. Usually, I do a lot of research about the theme at hand. While I color them and do digital renditions, I add broader influences. It is my experience as well as understanding that my dreams integrate a lot of what I consume in reading matter on social media or the internet and spiritually and whom I meet physically, in whichever blueprint I draw next. Almost if the Heavens grant me that tad of personalization to work otherwise not my own, from the spiritual realm. In most cases, I am just the downloader. My own 3 p's are friends, family and faith.

What is your creative process like? And how did you evolve into this way of working?

I usually have a repetitive dream and experience the holographic memories surrounding people in a cylindric form or the ones objects hold. Everything has a vibratory wave function. I make drawings of what I observe as a kind of blueprint/artistic QR code of what is really there. The subjects are multi-faceted and layered. Then I encode the pictures with music and maths and puzzles.
In the beginning, I just drew what I had observed. Then in 2008, I attended a conference in Japan and studied the work of Dr. Masaru Emoto on how human consciousness could affect the molecular structure of water. We are 75% water.
"I hear the pictures before I see them, then I smell them. I hear them in a continuous-time loop".
As soon as I have copied the drawings on paper, the sounds stop. I learned a lot from Dr. Emoto. He exposed water to certain sounds, froze the water, and then examined the frozen crystals under a microscope. I realized with a shock that what I was drawing, in the beginning, were frozen crystal patterns of the holographic memories of people or objects in points in time, almost spiritual USBs. It was wild. The Aerospace Institute of the University of Stuttgart, in Germany, went on to do amazing work also proving how human consciousness and intention change the molecular structure of water. I then started using kaleidoscopic computer software to turn the pictures. It was then that I really realized the work held layer upon layer of information. I am just the copy, paster downloader of a spiritual microdot. It brought me great peace but is an exciting process.

What aspect of your work do you pay particular attention to?

Documenting my work, creating a social/ legal framework for my whole inventory to be both traceable and protected both now and in the future. My work is now recognized as a brand. It is an asset. As a high-end artist, collectors expect no different.

Is there a piece you consider a "breakthrough" in your career?

During my first solo exhibition in Oman (2018), the work "Enclosure Fathom – Part 1: Exhibition – Mars Trojan – Elon – The Shroud (5517) A" drew major attention. By then, a digital rendition of the work had already been in low space orbit, due to my involvement with the Asgardia Space Nation, since November 2017, on the Asgardia - 1 Nano Cubesat - which tests long-term data storage conditions in low space orbit, with NASA.

We live in a society that waits for the Mahdi, Christ, and the arrival of ETs on earth, etc. Dr. Igor Ashurbeyli wants to help build a wall protecting the Earth; Elon Musk wishes to take us to Mars and build on the Moon, much like China. People are looking for a spiritual 'James Bond' charismatic type figure, one with the power of 'Christ' but the knowledge and ways of men. Some of the people that is. I personally have great respect for both men. I created the work before Musk launched his first rocket. It reflected some of the experiences of Paul Amadeus Dienach 1921/3906. I also later saw some Children's Drawings from the Terezín Ghetto from 1942-1944 in the Pinkes Synagogue administered by the Jewish Museum in Prague. One drawing looked like a rocket spilling open with Elon Musk and other people inside. I instinctively knew the two works were related. Billionaires are in a space race. But people are all in a space race: the heart space – the zero-point of the soul/spirit.

Sophia Where do I come from, Drawing, 29.2x20.7 cm, 2020 © Sharmaine Thérèsa Pretorius

It addresses what we really think of the field of the blessed and where it is, a sacred place or a state of heart? An Elysium or the Elysian Fields, a conception of the afterlife. How do we have to live in order to die in the right frame of soul/spirit? What or who do we need to save from? Covid-19 just strengthened that concept to me.

Personally AND publicly for me, it was to have been chosen to participate in the Group Exhibition – Florence International Biennale of Contemporary Art and Design: XIII FB THEME 2021 – Eternal Feminine – Change, during 2021. It was a juried exhibition. The work on exhibition (Natural Miah Alshurb, The Fountain of Excellent Memories in Mother's Eyes, Ayin, Zayin, Feeds our Thirst, The Rose Revisited, Help Mother Download Only Excellent Memories, The Eye of The Fountain is The Breast That Feeds Us: It Flowers We Flower) was my first public experiment with a hybrid digital Zoetrope set to the music of world-renowned musicians; medical doctor/soprano Dr. Maria-Elizabeth Bezuidenhout and John Rojas oboe player. The song is a Zulu lullaby known throughout Africa, "Thula Baba". It is about the spontaneous, authentic experience of a woman who chooses to save herself for her husband one day, to find the best possible father for her future children and her first-night flowering, the conception of her first child, and her singing a lullaby to him still in the womb and the shock and joy of birth.

It was a nod of respect to the powerful role of motherhood in all of our lives and bringing in remembrance The Ospedale Degli Innocenti; 'Hospital of the Innocents', in Florence, Italy. It was commissioned in 1419 by the Arte Della Seta and was originally a children's orphanage. Ancestors on my father's side of the family have a rich history in both Florence and Italy. So it felt a bit like a homecoming of sorts.

And how did your perception change over the last year due to the pandemic?

I was diagnosed in my twenties with Secondary Sjögren's Syndrome with mixed tissue disorder – an autoimmune illness. In my specific circumstances, I cannot ever be vaccinated. As a result, our lives have changed overnight. Laws in Oman don't facilitate my specific case. I have spent 11 plus years in the desert.

We all need to reframe our lives or have it possibly reframed for us forcibly. Everyone is tasked with taking care and compiling an inventory of their physical, psychological, and spiritual supply chain. Living with precision is totally reachable and only possible with casting out fear but being vigilant, caring, and loving. Of all things, love remains the strongest force. Friends, family, and faith versus fame, fortune, and fans is the winning solution. As an artist having to move my inventory and the whole household over a short period of time, cross-continent, seems to me as a definite reframing process, which I don't resist, but do find quite irresistible. I have always been in favor of 'keep it simple, but lovely'. I enjoy beautiful things but am more invested in relationships and people, though I do need refined, specialized medical care at present. I have therefore decided to market one of my art collections soon to reach that goal.

Sophia’s Guides Who are you Where do you come from (Kaleidoscopic version), Digital, 21.67x15.48 cm, 2019 © Sharmaine Thérèsa Pretorius

Golden Peace Bubbles Preparing For Flotation ‘MideleMarch’ (5517) L, Digital, 19.05x26.27 cm, 2020 © Sharmaine Thérèsa Pretorius

What are you working on now, and what are your plans for the future? Anything exciting you can tell us about?

I am uploading notes onto my website about the work:

1. Oita Ikebana Sakura: The Precious Slipper – An Ode to Mizuki (008172), from the collection Enclosure Fathom: 日本風コレクション – Nihon-fū korekushon – Japanese Inspired Collection – Ikigai (生き甲斐, "a reason for being") that has been on exhibition at Pepney Gallery in Northern Ireland as part of their "The Secret Garden" online exhibition as well as the physical exhibition at ALCHEMIC BODY | FIRE . AIR . WATER . EARTH 2021 – LONDON CONTEMPORARY ART FAIR – ITSLIQUID, during the past week.

2. My work Ithaca – Frozen Race in An Iron Age – Zoetrope can currently be seen at the Group Exhibition – 9th Edition – of CONTEMPORARY VENICE 2021. THE ROOM Contemporary Art Space - Nov 15 to Dec 09, 2021 and Misericordia Archives – Nov 16 to Dec 09, 2021. It is a hybrid Zoetrope about a Doge confronting his shadow of the past. Earth is in the grip of Dogs of War. They can contaminate, or the thinker, the seer, the prayer warrior, the really woken may live to see the light and victory.

I have been working with artists Shaimzy Correa (India), Page Du Plessis (South Africa) and Bakersfield native, John Rojas, brilliant musician and South African composer, soprano Maria Elizabeth Bezuidenhout, his wife, and Alicia Tideswell from Ireland, on different upcoming projects, for quite some time now. They all greatly excite me for different reasons.

There will also be the auction of the mystery Blue Car on December 2nd, 2021, which features some stories about my art, only open to time travelers, and an NFT auction of cartoons featuring Salvador Dali and a rhino being chased by a Lacemaker: Manners Maketh The Woman.

And lastly, what is one piece of advice you would give to an emerging artist?

I find DW Winnicott's quote, "Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide", very true, at least for me. The best advice I have listened to came from two different sources. The first was given by Rene Reitmeyer of The European Cultural Centre: 'publish, publish, publish!' If it is not documented, it does not exist: catalogs, art inventory registers, certificates of authenticity, proper pics of your art in different DPI settings, and publications in books, magazines, and newspapers. I had already completed 40 collections over 13 years before I got published anywhere during 2018. The second was the short 10 video documentary series by Sotheby's, The Value of Art. Following that advice will have you find your tribe, or they shall most definitely find you on social media somewhere, somehow.

Related Interviews