About the Artist
Ingrid E Uys was born in 1985 in Ermelo, Mpumalanga, and
currently lives in Johannesburg with her husband and two
daughters. Growing up in small towns like Ermelo, Kroonstad,
Clarens, and Harrismith, she spent most of her childhood
days painting and drawing the world around her. Her exposure to
nature, open spaces, different places and people nurtured a
curiosity in the world around her, and making drawings and
paintings have always been a way to collect those moments and
memories, expressing herself and her thoughts.
After years of art classes in different studios in different towns, Ingrid
Uys completed her BA Fine Art Degree in 2007 at the University of Pretoria,
specializing in oil painting under the tutorage of among others, Diane Victor,
Philip Badenhorst, and Rina Stutzer. Ingrid had her first solo exhibition in 2016 at Halifax Art Gallery in Johannesburg, with Diane Victor as the opening speaker. She has been part of numerous group exhibitions since then at various spaces, an incredible first show at Turbine Art Fair 2018 with the White River Gallery, and again in 2019 with Carol Lee Fine Art and White River Gallery. Ingrid has donated work to be auctioned at charity exhibitions for the likes of Surgeons for Little Lives, and Goldilocks and the Bear Foundation. Her work is currently part of numerous international collections of note, private and corporate.
Ingrid Uys has become known for her detailed paintings and drawings depicting birds in flight. This series of work has developed significantly since her first solo exhibition with Halifax Art, “This Fleeting Forever”. Her fascination with Fleeting Time and Impermanence is a major theme in her work, and her recent collections have focused on the Hummingbird species, swallows and blossoms, and more recently Autumn leaves, as a metaphor for “Capturing Moments”.
Hummingbirds are highly sensitive to stimuli in their visual fields, responding to even minimal motion in any direction by reorienting themselves in mid flight. Hummingbirds’ visual sensitivity allows them to precisely hover in place while in complex and dynamic natural environment. This gives an illusion of a moment frozen in time, and the artist depicts this unique characteristic and ability in her work to explore the fragility of time.
The Hummingbird also represents the artist in this way: responding to the changes in our visual world, redirecting ourselves to focus and hover and explore and express.
“My work invites the viewer to experience a moment captured in time. And in doing so, hopefully creates an awareness of the fragility of time, how precious every second can be, how a single moment can leave a lasting effect, change our perception, change our life.”
Uys urges the viewer to think about the great importance of time, to experience the present, and notice the delicate beauty of the impermanent world.