I was born Marittie Janse van Rensburg on 8 January 1966.

I finished school joyously with extinctions in Afrikaans and Art in 1983 at High School Gimnasium, Potchefstroom. Athletics and Art, playing piano, violin and the recorder were the highlights of my school career.  

 

Later, I completed my degree B.A. Communications at Potchefstroom /University with no expectations of climbing the corporate career.  I then worked at the Herald Newspaper in Potchefstroom for one year, aiming to discover myself and my spiritual strength.

At the age of 25 years, I felt I wanted to move to Cape Town, to live near the sea, so I did, without a place to stay, a job or a husband.

 

In the next eight years I travelled to Cairo, Egypt, and 18 states of America, working in the corporate world as a Public Relations officer and Personal Assistant.

In 1997 I met my future husband and  began to help finish our sailboat “ Moya”, in a hanger in Woodstock, Cape Town. We lived and worked there- where I started doing woodwork making mirror frames, and small sculptures, selling them at the Waterfront and art shows in and around Cape Town.

 

When the sailboat was complete, we left Cape Town (1999) for unknown destinations.

We travelled to South America- Brazil, French Guieana, Suriname, Devil's Island (Papillon),

and then the Caribbean chain in Trinidad. I discovered   that I was pregnant, and our first daughter was born in St. Maarten in the Netherland Antilles.  At two months we travelled with her to the U.S.A. and worked and stayed there for one year. For the next three years we travelled up and down the chain in the Caribbean, Bahamas and North America on our boat, missing the hurricanes, earning money and living a peaceful life.  Our second girl was born on the island of Grenada in the Caribbean in 2002.

 

In 2003 we returned to SA, and decided to settle on a farm at the foothills of the Outeniqua Mountains.

We found it, after landing in Jhb, travelling with a caravan and Van (Mercedes Sprinter), on the lookout for a little house on a farm in the mountains to raise our two girls.

 

I started to paint professionally and had my first exhibition in 2005.

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Marittie is also a home school parent and works from her studio at the foothills of the Robinson Pass, just outside Mossel Bay. Her husband is a sculptor and woodworker, and her two girls are 10 and 7 years old.  She lives without a television, which she believes has a great benefit to our life. She is passionate about music, art and other passionate, individualistic people. Marittie lives amongst buck, baboons, monkeys, chickens, nearby cows, a range of birds, 5 cats and 2 dogs- in peace and love. She works 7 days a week, with coffee breaks, and school in the mornings with the girls. She thanks God every day for her life that she dreamt about and is currently living out.