Ora of colourful curves

In the heart of sleepy Blythedale, a friendly lady with short, straight, dark hair and excited eyes lives in a facebrick house, where a colourful, creative surprise awaits you.

Ora Klopper is the name of the shy, former teacher from Stanger High School, who has always had a fascination for art.

“One day, I asked the school’s art teacher to teach me how to draw. She did, but with water colours, which I did not like. It was so soft. I wanted to work with bold colours,” said Klopper, whose art idol is Hannetjie de Clercq.

“I moved on to fabric painting and it was love at first brush stroke. I started giving lessons from my garage. We would put on some music and paint tablecloths, cushions and all sorts of lovely things. It was such a special time.”

The art group did not stop at fabric.

“We tried pottery lessons, ceramics, played with mosaics and fought with the eternal bubbles in decoupage.

When she started her Baroque BnB about 18 years ago, there was little time for art.

Painting however stuck with Klopper.

“I have always worked with acrylic paint, but I only paint from April until October. The summer is too hot for me to paint.”

Inspired by lyrics and novels, she paints creative, lovingly naive scenes with voluptuous women.

“My art is not serious. It is a bit childish and up in the air fun. I enjoy painting clouds and curvy women. To me larger women are much nicer to paint, even though I am so skinny.”

Her husband, Leon, inspects her paintings to see if the dimensions and perspective are right.

“He is an engineer, so he understands how things should look. I just paint. I make sure to always count five fingers on each hand, but the rest just happens. He will say the flower pot is too small for the flowers. I say, it does not matter, it cannot fall over because it is on canvas.”

While Klopper said she sometimes gets frustrated with her paintings during the creative process, she enjoys the moment when it is done.

“My favourite time is when I can sit back, turn up the music, look at my painting and enjoy what I see.”

Although Klopper finds it embarrassing to ask shops to sell her artworks, she said she had to start doing it.

“My house was simply too full. I had no more space to hang up anything.”

Pop into Serenite at Tiffany’s to see Klopper’s fun creations or give her a ring, pop in for some tea and feast your eyes on her work.

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