Nola Muller – Familiar Places
& ceramics by Michele Koch

5th November- 28th November 2026

Nola Muller
Reviewing her first exhibition in 1978 for the Argus Eldred Green described Nola as ‘Hedonist (who) takes pleasure in her environment’.  Expanding on his apt observation Nola says:
‘I am still living a playful life between the ocean and the mountains of the Cape Peninsula. From a young age I was fascinated by the creatures in the intertidal coastal rock pools at Dalebrook and equally awed by the towering mountains above Kirstenbosch.
My creative talent was fuelled by being in the sea as a ‘Longboarder’ from the 1960’s. I learnt about the moods of a breaking wave. It was a fortunate lifestyle also hiking through our magnificent fynbos on the slopes of the Table Mountain National Park.
Observation translates into my interpretation of painting the elements, floral colours and dramatic structure of boulders and rocks.
Subjects that don’t require distortion but familiar rendering in both watercolours and oils.
If I pull up to the roadside on Chapmans Peak Pass, it is not because of a puncture, it is because I so often stop on my bicycle to observe the foamy pulse between the sea and the cliffs.
So it is in a full circle that I come back to painting ‘familiar places’. “

Michele Koch
'My hands are happiest when they are in clay’ says Michele.  Her handmade ceramics fired to stoneware temperatures are designed to bring a sense of occasion to an event; she decorates the surface of her pottery with imprinted messages, lace or horsehair, sealing memories in stoneware through the process of firing.