I was born on a winter’s day in 1970. I took my first breath at a Heidelberg hospital in the old Transvaal. My parents named me Willem Nicolaas van der Schyff – after my father and his father.

I spent most of my childhood and adolescence in the Bushveld, close to Ellisras (now called Lepalale) on a farm called Johannesberg. At heart I am a farm boy.

As a youngster I dabbled in water colours. and carried around a sketchbook. I painted on my mother’s unbleached, ungesso-ed linen and framed my artistic adventures using hardboard.

For more than thirty years my interest in painting lay dormant. Then, while playing tennis in September 2017, I noticed the ball exit through a hole in the fence, going where it was not supposed to go, making its fortunate, impossible escape. I went to pick up the ball, in awe of what had just happened. At that moment, God told me that my life would unfold as uniquely as the ball’s moment of escape.

While waiting on God for guidance at the start of October 2017, I was given the phrase “tree of life”. I googled “tree of life” and landed on a web page offering art classes. The page featured a painting of the “tree of life” and mentioned the name of artist Helena van der Nest-Strijdhorst. I started laughing, wondering how on earth God expected me to do art classes in the Netherlands, while I was living in Pretoria, South Africa. However, the next day I felt the urge to take a closer look at the site. And then I got the message loud and clear: the art classes were offered just around the corner, less than seven kilometres away! I contacted Helena and enrolled for the art classes I was destined to do.

At the moment the theme of my work is small business, informal settlement and surroundings. I work in acrylic on canvas.

The path I follow as an artist in obedience to God has shown me that he can do “exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think”.