Strauss & co - 16 February 2019, Cape Town

47 33 Georgina Gratrix SOUTH AFRICAN 1982– Bride Dressed as Cake signed and dated 2017 on the reverse oil on canvas 100 by 75 cm R100 000 – 150 000 EXHIBITED SMAC Gallery Booth, Cape Town Art Fair, 17 to 19 February 2017. ITEM NOTES Georgina Gratrix’s sumptuous paintings are recognisable by their energetic colours and richly textured surfaces, as well as her expression- ist proclivity for figural distortion. Painted in her former Barron Street studio in Woodstock, a photo in a 1990s bridal magazine provided the inspiration for this bride with calla lilies. Gratrix often uses photo- graphs as a starting point, only to pursue intuitions suggested by the emerging painting itself. The floral detailing is integral to the composition. ‘I like the thing of people drowning in floral excess, which brides often tend to do,’ says Gratrix, whose concealed human subject is described with the mini- mum of fuss, as pearly teeth framed by garish red lips and knitted pink hands with red fingernails. Christo Coetzee’s bridal portraits from the 1940s onwards are an important reference for Gratrix. ‘I like Coetzee’s story in general, and adore his brides in particular. I love the ambiguity and kitschness of them.’ 1 Sean O’Toole 1. Georgina Gratrix, pers. comm., telephone interview with Sean O’Toole, Cape Town, 28 November 2018.