Self-supporting artist inspires

Gallery

MOSSEL BAY NEWS - Reebok artist and crafter Christine Westraat is a good example for single moms who would like to be self employed.

She started working for herself when her son was seven years old.

"When I was in an office job in Port Elizabeth and my son was not yet in school, I planned to work for myself."

Christine paints on corrugated iron and other surfaces and sells her artworks at craft markets in the Mossel Bay and George areas most weekends. She also sells some of her work at an outlet in Albertinia and one in Mossel Bay.

Photo gallery: Artist and crafter Christine Westraat

She buys corrugated iron from scrapyards and cuts it herself with a welder. She taught herself by watching someone else weld.

When it is cut mechanically, the edges are too sharp.

"Where there's a will, there's a way," Christine says. "My work is very hard." To flatten the corrugations, Christine drops a 25kg piece of railway track, welded on to a pipe, on to the corrugations.

'Good workout'
"I get a good workout on my arms."

Christine also paints on disused DStv dishes. "I also love buying things, doing them up and selling them."

She earns enough to live comfortably and even put her son, now 32 years old, through university herself. He has a successful career in marketing and advertising. "My son had everything other children had.

"I'm not a high maintenance woman," she says. She has been self-employed since 1996, when she moved from Port Elizabeth to Sedgefield.

After her office job, she did pottery for eight years. She made birds from molds. Then she painted sea cottages under the name C. Shore for nine years.

The garden signs Christine paints are all over the world, she says. She exported her work to Ireland for 17 years, but that came to an end when Covid-19 struck. She has been painting donkeys for the past six years.

Painted house
Christine has even painted a house for a friend, who could not afford the R30 000 quote she was given by someone else. "I'm not afraid of hard work and working with my hands," Christine says. She ended up doing much of the décor and artwork for the house as well.

"I'm very active; I can't sit still. I was sitting in my dining room the other night and ended up moving my furniture around."

Christine says that even when she is fishing, her favourite pastime, she wants to jump up and make people coffee or braai. She has lived in Reebok for 15 years.

Christine is 'not afraid of hard work', she says.