Michelle Henns personality reflects her artistic flair as a fauvism inspired mostly
impressionistic artist with a love for strong vibrant colours, or muted pallets with high contrast. Her favourite subjects are inspired by the beauty of nature, mainly seascapes and landscapes with an intriguing play on other subjects such as still life, objects or animals found in and around these nature based areas.
She was born in Cape town and spent a total of 29 years in the mother city, where after she spent 2 years in Port Elizabeth and has settled in the Garden Route since 2013. She now lives in George with her husband and four legged children.
Her work is done in professional acrylics, oils and she occasionally incorporates multimedia such as the use of drawing pastels, lace, shell fragments, wood, etc.
Now that she is a full time artist, we can expect much more work from her in the future, which will
not be limited to original art, but in addition creative solutions. She has had no formal fine art
tertiary training however has done so in the areas of Interior Design and Art Therapy Facilitating.
This combined with her extensive past career experience exceeding 19 years in Marketing will
benefit her newly launched Smudge Creative Agency, with the aim of combining art with adventure
retreats, demonstrations, private tuition and commissions, illustrations, murals (as seen on the
bespoke mural she completed for Views Boutique Hotel in 2022), prints, as well as a creative old
school approach to social media marketing for companies or individuals requiring a different
intimate approach on reaching their audience.
Michelle is a member of the Wilderness Arts Association, Southern Cape Association of Visual Artists,
Knysna Arts Association as well as SANAVA
Past and current exhibitions and commissions include her art reaching places as far as Holland and
the US. She frequently participates in local exhibitions and initiatives including the Wilderness Arts
Festival, CANSA art auction, Cabesa Gallery, privately and online with current upcoming projects
including the Winter Wonderland exhibition at the new George Museum Art Gallery and the
Silvermountain Music Festival in Heidelberg.
Her primary goal is to become a well known artist so that she can reach beyond creating art to teach
others that creativity lives within each one of us, in her own gallery of her dreams. The sense of
belonging, serenity and fulfilment behind a brush is something we should share. In addition she
aims to have this platform to propel her into environmental art projects and art therapy to help
facilitate the recovery of persons being treated by physical therapy facilities etc
