Thomas Kohler

?Living so close to the Atlantic, on the West Coast of South Africa is a great influence to my work. A constant striving to picture movement of water in its essence has become an obsession and my love for sailing, the yachts and people play a major role. Still - there is a constant struggle between depicting the subject in its ?realistic? form and developing a sense of ?feeling? for all the different impressions at the same time. Depicting this both in some sort of harmony ? well, I?m working at it. I was born in Cape Town in 1964 and lived here until the turbulent '70s, when my family decided to leave South Africa for Germany. I was educated in Cologne to become a graphic designer and returned to South Africa in 1988. After working in advertising for 17 years, I decided to change this rather hectic lifestyle, scale down and venture into pursuing what I really wanted to do - paint. Ships have been in my family's blood for generations. My Great-Grandfather built them, we sailed them and used them as transport in 1939, when my Grandparents emigrated from Prussia to South West Africa, now Namibia. My parents and I travelled on the famous Union Castle Liners to Europe and back and my dad introduced me to sailing from a very young age. This has basically stimulated my art until now.?