South Africa
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| Renate was born in Cape
Town, South Africa, as the youngest child of four, to an immigrant family.
As she never crawled as an infant, was very silent, and fairly odd, her
mother, (who was 42 when Renate was born), called upon a child-therapist,
who announced that Renate had Downs Syndrome. At 4 years old, she suddenly started to draw. At 5 years old she started playing the piano and winning awards. Now she was declared to be a genius! Renate has always felt the absolute and overpowering need to be creative from that point on in her life. Her art studies began at the Michaelis School of Art in Cape Town and were furthered in Germany, where Renate met her husband, and, eventually landed in Munich, where she pursued a career as an editorial illustrator, for the magazines Capital, Freundin, Maedchen, Gourmet. Eventually, however, Renate felt the call of home and returned to South Africa. Now living in Johannesburg, she has become a multi-award-winning advertising illustrator, with awards including the Loerie Award for illustration, the SPADA Award for the Finders-Keepers Series. Her real love is working by hand, in line, inks, acrylics, airbrush, & gouache with her favourite sideline art style being her 3 dimensional multimedia collages. |