Afra Hall-Beers was born in Ranfurly, New Zealand, the eldest child of Paul Beers and Johanna Beers-Verlaat who moved in the fifties from ravaged war-torn Holland to come to a new land of hope and opportunity.
As a small child Afra was never interested in colouring in the pictures in the many colouring-in books she was given as gifts, much preferring to draw her own images in the blank spaces available around the edge of each page. She would draw on the backs of envelopes, butchers paper, anything that had room for an image of something she saw.
When she was given her first box of watercolour paints at age 8 she learned to capture the rugged mountains surrounding her home town – towering peaks covered in snow in winter and magically purple and orange in the fading light of late summer. The autumn fields of ripened wheat and oats spirited her to capture tone and intensity against brooding stormy skies preparing to rain. It was a place that caught her imagination and passion for still, calm places vibrating with life and energy.
Now as she takes a new direction after years in business life, the pull of the easel is once again strong, but it is animals and people that stir her now as she endeavors to not only capture their likeness, but also their spirit. The love of landscape is still there and her new home in Beechmont Queensland has vistas in abundance with rolling green fields, dotted with forested areas, huge skies of intense azure colour fading to the mountains that form The Great Dividing Range to the west or as silvery early morning glow hovering over the Pacific Ocean and the high rises of the Gold Coast to the east.
Truly a place for an artistic soul to flourish!
afrasarttractions.com 