Every year, through our Featured Artist Programme, a selected artist or creative brings a distinct perspective to the event. This artist is invited by the Steering Committee to share work that expands the conversations taking place across the studios.
2026: Lisa Ringwood
Lisa Ringwood was selected as an established voice in South African ceramics. Her distinctive practice brings together material, intent, story and a strong connection to the natural world, developed through many years of making and exhibiting.
2025: Cathy Layzell
As an established mid-career artist, Cathy Layzell was selected as Featured Artist for her mastery of paint and colour, and for the scale and freshness of her work. Her practice translates time spent outdoors, watching water and light dissolve into ripples and reflection, into layered, atmospheric paintings. This practice is shaped by more than twenty years of full-time painting, and by her training in colour theory and light at the Painting School of Montmiral in southwest France. Her work continues to explore how painting can transform perception through the poetry of light.
2024: Jenna Burchell
After moving to Kommetjie in 2024, Jenna Burchell was selected as Featured Artist for her fusing of digital and natural elements in order to archive memory. Her interactive sound sculptures give voice to the stories of people, places, and events, recognised in works like the Songsmith ‘singing stones’ at Spier. During the 2024 event weekend, visitors could explore the Songsmith rocks in transformation, alongside process work from her Heartbreak Pots series, then on exhibition at the Dakar Biennale.
2023: Wim Botha
Wim Botha was invited as our inaugural Featured Artist in 2023, the aim being to bring an established artist from our area into the Open Studios Kommetjie community. This created a space for Wim to share his highly developed sculptural practice and his thinking with other artists and visitors. His work, recognised for its conceptual depth and distinctive engagement with material and form, is exhibited in museums and galleries around the world. During the 2023 event, visitors had the chance to view sculptures in progress alongside his wood-fired earthenware ceramic vessels, inspired by the natural landscape and by his journeys to Japan.
