About:

In 1975, at the age of 15, Tisa Mertz started taking painting lessons, it was there that she fell in love with the art. These early paintings consisted mostly of still lives and landscapes from illustrated painting books. From there she continued to refine her techniques and started to paint figures. It was during this time that she discovered one of her favourite subjects and one she focuses on to this day - painting women in their everyday lives.

In 2001 she moved to the Western Cape. There, under the guidance of David Zelter from the Hout Straat Gallery, she refined her figure paintings. She made numerous paintings ranging from flower sellers in Cape Town to fishmongers in Kalk Bay. Over the following couple of years, her style changed from realism to impressionism with the influence of great masters such as Gauguin and Van Gogh, and more locally, Esmonde-White. During this time she also started taking classes from the late Ryno Swart, working mainly from real life. She started putting more emphasis on the construction of sketches a practice that still forms the basis of her work today.

Around 2019 she started painting her story paintings; a series of paintings incorporating fantastical elements in order to tell a story to the observer. One of the things that especially interested her was how different people could see different stories in the same painting.

From this, she turned her focus toward more abstract work. She finds the simplifying and reducing of form and colour fascinating. The challenge of implementing these concepts into her own work is one that she thoroughly enjoys.

“I have always been interested in capturing a moment of people's lives, especially with regard to their relationships with one another. I aim to do so in a way that is relatable to the viewer and tells a story. The details of that story, however, are up to you.”