A graduate of LSAD, Claudette's first solo exhibition, Cailin, opens at the Thinkk Creative Gallery on Cecil Street this Friday. I started ballet when I was four and wanted to be a prima ballerina so dance has always been a huge part of my life. South Africa is a very multi-cultural place, with so many different forms of cultural expression in competition with each other so that's how I was first exposed to flamenco. We once went out to a restaurant where flamenco happened to be on and I fell in love with it.

I love the energy and style of flamenco and I did it from 12 to 18. I danced professionally in the restaurants and clubs around Johannesburg and that was a good source of income to me when I was still in school. My teacher and I were like family and we still talk. I try to incorporate dancers and the movement of dancers into my work... and I still love to dance. Every Saturday night, I'm the one getting everybody up on the dancefloor.

We ended up in Ireland mostly because of my mother, who has been breeding Irish wolfhounds since she was a kid. She was always into Irish legends and folklore and it was after she made a visit to Ireland that she decided she wanted to move here. She moved to a small farm in Sligo because when her wolfhounds arrived, she realised there wasn't enough room for them on a small housing estate in Corbally.

I don't know where Limerick gets its reputation from. I wanted to stay here when my mum moved to Sligo. It's so lovely to walk down the street at random and meet any number of people you know. It's so familiar and so safe and has a superior quality of life. Its smallness is part of its charm. I even like the weather and the rain. It's what makes Ireland so rich and so green.

Limerick does have a stigma to it that's known even internationally. It's not justified really in my experience. Johannesburg is the real crime capital of the world. Sometimes you leave your house in the morning not knowing if you're going to come back that night. You can walk home in Limerick at two in the morning and wear your best diamond ring without having to worry that your arm is going to be chopped off.


My main influences would be the Secessionalists and the Impressionists, all of them. Then there's Michelangelo, Simon Beasley. I've been reading Spawn comics since I was about 13. The surrealist Giger. These are all influences. And of course, Gustav Klimt.

My studio is my bedroom. I sleep with tarps and white spirit fumes and images strewn all over the place. I stay up late at night just looking at the paintings, almost looking through them to see what has to happen next. It is like the painting is telling me what to do and what it needs.

I like to incorporate this theatrical world into my work. This is a very special part of my life and drama, dance and music enriches the discourse of my work...the external factors like music and my emotional state are clearly visible in the finished piece. It is like they too are rubbed off into the painting and add to the emotional atmosphere while creating a piece of art work. It's a process mentally, physically and emotionally involving all the senses and one becomes absorbed and transfixed into the painting, like reading a book and being transported to another world.

Interview: Mike Dwane