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Kirsten Joubert is a Cape Town-based artist whose creative journey has unfolded over nearly three decades.
Trained in Fine Art, Kirsten has never been particularly interested in being confined to one medium or one way of making art. Her work moves between oil and acrylic painting, mixed media, paper, textiles, wood, sculpture and dimensional work.
Texture plays an especially important role in her work—often taking a piece beyond the purely visual and giving it an almost tactile, physical presence.
But Kirsten's journey as an artist hasn't happened in isolation from the rest of her life.
She is a mother of three sons, whom she home-schooled for four years during their primary-school years. Alongside raising her family and making art, she established and runs Chayyim Centre, a holistic wellness practice in Cape Town. Her interest in people, healing, creativity and the deeper aspects of human experience inevitably finds its way into the way she sees and creates.
Kirsten describes herself as a Mystic, and her relationship with God is an important undercurrent in her creative life. Some works express this very directly, while in others it appears more quietly through themes of creation, nature, transformation, light, movement and the unseen.
Her work is therefore not defined by one recognisable visual formula. It has changed as she has changed.
From the expressive figurative work of her earlier years to abstraction, heavily textured surfaces and contemporary dimensional pieces, there is an ongoing willingness to experiment with materials and follow an idea wherever it leads.
Creating for others
Creating for others
Over the years, Kirsten has created commissioned artwork for both private and commercial clients.
A significant commercial project involved creating artworks for the Hyatt Regency, with pieces installed throughout guest rooms and suites, the Urchin Restaurant and the Presidential Suite. For this project, the designs and visual references were supplied by the interior decorators. Kirsten's role was to take the images they provided and determine how to reproduce them as finished physical artworks. This required working across a wide range of materials and techniques—including painting, mixed media, paper, textiles and wood—and at scales ranging from individual pieces to large architectural installations.
The project demonstrated Kirsten's versatility as a maker: her ability to work with different materials and techniques, solve practical creative challenges, and accurately bring someone else's designs into physical form.
Today, Kirsten continues to create original work while accepting selected private and commercial commissions.
She also creates murals and sculptural work, teaches art from Morningstar in Cape Town, and is expanding her creative work into interior decorating.
At the heart of all of it is the same question:
What is the essence?
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