Pieter A. Pienaar

I hail from the Kalahari region in the Northern Cape, South Africa. I did not study art at a tertiary level, but through a series of interesting events I ended up in art teaching and

I have been in the colourful classroom for the last twenty years. As a result of my involvement in the art room

I became interested in the arts therapies.

In my postgraduate studies I investigated the value the arts hold for self-insight and it has become an interest of mine and I hope to present more motivational courses in the future that will entail harnessing the therapeutic aspects

of the arts to awaken people to their own potential. 

In 2008 I obtained my PhD from the University of Pretoria

in Learning Support, Guidance and Counselling with a dissertation entitled: The impact of narrative arts activities on the self-concept of grade 9 learners in group context.

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I am passionate about art making and I believe that being creative allows us an opportunity for healing and

self-actualization, amongst other things. Being a full-time teacher does not allow me much time to do traditional work on a large scale. I enjoy doing "quick" abstracts or spout drawings (and still life paintings - when I have time to concentrate) during school holidays. Since the completion of my PhD studies I have had six exhibitions and even though time is always a pressing matter for all earth dwellers, I try to exhibit once every two years at least.

The last three of the aforementioned exhibitions took

place in Saudi Arabia where I taught art for four years.

Since August 2016, I am teaching art in China.

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The goal of my website is to meet like-minded people, to show my work the way I feel I want to do it, to network,

to talk about what is important to me and to hopefully contribute to some form of colourful happiness. I recently self-published my first book, which deals with my life as

an art teacher in Saudi Arabia and seeing that numerous speakers on the internet prompt new authors to get a website, I am merely following their advice by opening

an “umbrella” that will protect my interests.