Ivor Markman
 
When artist Mary-Ann Orr moved to Bedford 10 years ago she had not touched her art for 30 years. 
She couldn't reconcile the modern art movement with its 'kidneys in formaldehyde' or 'bicycle wheels stuck up on walls' type artwork. 
She couldn’t find reason behind why she would think of doing something so nonsensical.

For her, the big question was what is really art? 
Mary-Ann did her fine art degree at UCT’s Michaelis School of Fine Art where she majored in sculpture and photograph, also, painting till midway through her third year. 
For those 30 years she put her career as an artist on hold while she reared her children. 
“I pushed prams and drove (the kids) to ballet - backwards and forwards. I just lived,” she said. 
During 2000, Mary-Ann suffered a personal tragedy and she started questioning her purpose in life. 
She wanted to make an impact “before I go and pump up the daisies”. 
“I had been very involved in the whole question of the new age and metaphysics (as well as) a lot of spirituality.

"What's happening from a spiritual perspective,” she said. 
While involved in organic gardening she also started doing research and looking at her situation in Africa. 
Her final year paper while a student at Michaelis on the state of art in Southern Africa made a huge impression on her. 
While living and working in northern Kwazulu-Natal she was very involved with the local Zulus and because of her interest in organic gardening, was very motivated by the shaman and medicinal plants. 
“I had an opportunity to question what is art in Africa,” she said. 
“Most art in Africa is either functional or spiritual by nature. (The art is) used for story-telling. 
This early influence on her work is strikes visitors as they enter her yard in the form of three-dimensional, bushman-influenced sculptures in the shape of mosaic chairs. 
As Mary-Ann explored ways of finding meaning to her art she also sought cheaper ways to add colour to her canvases. 
The only art materials available in Bedford were items such as A4 paper and pens such as are used in schools. 
“When I discovered how I wanted to express myself I didn't have a cent to my name,” she said. 
“I did two things, I collected rubbish and made sculptures. Then I had a look around the house.”
She quickly realised clothes and household textiles contained pigment. 
Then she started hunting for old clothes and collected old tomato boxes to be used to sort the colours. These became her “tubes” of colour. 
The fabrics were cut into confetti sized pieces and used them to “paint” in pretty much the same way the impressionist painters used dabs of paint. 
“I had my Mom's old sewing machine and thought, well, let me teach myself how to paint with my sewing machine." 
That’s exactly what she did. But her artworks are far from simple tapestries. 
“I was taking old clothes and transforming them onto something beautiful.” 
“At the same time I was researching the cosmology of the San,” she said. 
Mary-Ann said Africa's wealth was in the oral tradition and they expressed this tradition through their paintings on cave walls, pretty much in the same manner as European artists expressed themselves in their cathedrals. 
“I saw the Sistine Chapel in African format (and) I wanted to be involved in making my cave walls,” she said. 
Mary-Ann’s challenge was to take the animated dream and turn it into inanimate flat art.
“That to me was the challenge. Can I actually do it? 
“The challenge of the artist is to take the invisible and make it visible,” she said.