19/4/2005

A painting by a 12-year-old schoolgirl of the Cape winelands has been sold for a whopping R33 000 at a charity auction of child art in Cape Town tonight.

And five further works of art by children as young as five fetched an average of R18 000, with the smallest work, depicting a diving scene by 5-year-old Jana Coetzee going under the hammer for R17 000.

The budding artist whose work stole the show is talented Ria Prinsloo from Bloemfontien. She was one of the entrants in Santam's Child Art Project - started over 42 years ago to promote a love of art and help children express thoughts and ideas creatively.

Eltie Links, Santam's Head of Corporate Citizenship, says the Child Art Project is one of SA's oldest social investment projects. Tonight's inaugural Child Art auction of six paintings in Cape Town intends to create awareness for and bolster the coffers of the group's Child Art Trust funds. A second auction of the remaining 7 works will be held in Johannesburg next week.

The fund provides free art classes to children in marginalised communities through a partnership with final year art students and teachers. It currently offers classes to more than 30 groups of children throughout South Africa and Namibia.

In addition to providing children with a creative outlet, the initiative boosted the entries in Santam's annual national child art competition. Last year almost half the entries originated from these art classes.

The winning artworks will also feature in this year's Santam calander and each winner will receive art supplies to the value of R2 500, as well as a framed copy of their auctioned artwork.

Each winning school and art centre will also receive R2 000 to further the talent of these and other promising artists.

Other winners' works on auction were Leandi Smit, 10 whose painting of sunflowers went for R19 000, Anathi Tyawa, 15, whose work depicted his grandfather went for R25 000, Retha Engelbrecht, 6 whose work entitled 'my wonderful world of colours' sold for R15 000 and Keoma Jansen, 13 whose work entitled 'unity amongst our diverse culture' went for R15 000.

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