Lella Kondylis (Porcelain Petites)

Lella lives in Cape Town, her home studio, overlooking the garden and mountain is where she spends many happy hours playing with porcelain.

For the exhibition Dialogue, she has chosen the artists, Henri Rousseau, Yayoi Kusama and Georgia O'Keefe.

Her piece, 'Suburban Rousseau' is inspired by naïve, post-impressionist painter Henri Rousseau. Hand carved and painted, the porcelain piece draws on images from the jungle scenes in his paintings "Surprise" and "The dream". Lella has set the scene in her garden and replaced the jungle creatures with her pets and the neighbours wandering cat.  Lella, a self-taught porcelain artist, loves that Rousseau did not care about rules and made his own rules as he went along.

Japanese contemporary artist, Yayoi Kusama, and her Pop art mushrooms and brightly coloured polka dots, is the playful inspiration behind 'Psychedelic Mushroom' The mushroom's cap lifts off to create another vase while Kusama looks on.  Open about her mental health, Kusama has stated, “I fight pain, anxiety and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieved my illness is to keep creating art.”

Georgia O'Keeffe found isolation and inspiration in the near desert of New Mexico.

"Such a beautiful, untouched lonely feeling place, such a fine part of what I call the Faraway" O'Keeffe wrote to a friend.

Here she painted close up views of flowers and the stark beauty of the landscape.

In the piece titled 'Moonrise over desert landscape' Lella has tried to capture the fullness and the bone-dry beauty of flowers under desert moon in the Faraway.