Vendor Biography
Meet the South African Artist: Marika Steynberg van Wyk
To experience the art of Marika Steynberg van Wyk is to step inside a living journal, pages of colour, texture, and emotion that invite you to walk with her through moments of discovery, reverence, and reflection. An experienced Game Ranger, Field Guide, and Arabian Horse Breeder, Marika finds her greatest inspiration in the wild landscapes and living creatures that surround her farm studio near Dullstroom. Here, in the quiet rhythm of nature, her brush meets canvas, and her inner world takes form.
Art has been woven into Marika’s life since childhood. She still recalls the day, in grade 2, when she tested her sketching skills in the back of her mathematics book and instinctively knew that art would always be part of her story. Born into a family where creativity runs deep, she naturally embraced the discipline as a way of seeing and understanding the world. Her preference for studying from life remains central to her process. With sketchbook in hand, she often ventures off the beaten path to conduct field studies, painting in plein air and allowing her work to grow out of direct encounters with the land, light, and creatures she knows so intimately.
For Marika, creativity is more than expression; it is therapy, healing, and hope. She discovered the restorative power of making art when she needed to navigate through difficult, even traumatic, experiences in her own life. This personal journey inspired her to pursue studies in both Art and Equine Therapy, determined to help others find the same release, comfort, and strength in creativity that she herself found.
Her artistic practice is as diverse as her inspirations. Sketching with charcoal provides her with the freedom and immediacy she loves, while her oil paintings allow her to explore bold, vibrant colour. Her studio pieces often hold echoes of days gone by, memories of encounters with wildlife, moments of connection with animals, and quiet times of giving thanks to the Creator of life. They invite us to contemplate not only the beauty of the natural world but also our own place within it.
Marika’s landscapes are never merely depictions; they are stories infused with imaginative twists. They speak of realisations, dreams, and deep spiritual growth. Some carry historical or cultural weight, while others emerge as honest interpretations meant to persuade us to notice, to care, and to act. Through her art, Marika draws attention to the fragility of the natural world, calling viewers to protect and preserve it. Her dedication to the heritage of the Desert Asil Arabian Horse and her reverence for wilderness both stand as recurring themes in her work. Each brushstroke becomes both homage and appeal, a reminder of what we have, what we risk losing, and what we are called to safeguard.
At its heart, her art is a conversation: between human and nature, between memory and imagination, between gratitude and wonder. It is rooted in lived experience, yet it always reaches for something larger, something eternal.
To encounter Marika Steynberg van Wyk’s work is to be invited into this conversation. It is to walk alongside her as she reflects, dreams, and creates. Her paintings do not merely ask to be looked at; they ask to be felt, to be pondered, to be remembered.
Step into her world. Journey through her work. And in doing so, discover not only the landscapes and creatures she paints with such devotion, but also the deeper truth that binds us all to the natural world and to one another.