But is it art? (Yes, it most definitely is)

As a kid I loved visiting my grandparents. They had such interesting stuff. Shuttlecock tins filled with knitting needles, boxes of screws, stuffed animals, oriental tourism kitsch, expanding table mats. I still remember the texture of the velveteen furniture, variegated-pile carpets, embossed wallpaper, melamine plates and mid-century imbue sideboard (with ball-and-claw feet, brass-handled doors and drawers, and a top that was bevelled like a curly bracket).

My grandparents’ house had saloon doors leading up the passage … that swung both ways!! They had a room called a “den”, with pine-panelled walls and a built-in desk. Their lawn was not kikuyu like ours. It was soft and velvety and exotic.

The garden furniture was made out of bent iron, painted white, with wire riempies that left waffle-iron indentations on the backs of your legs if you sat without putting a cushion down. The cushions themselves were thin squares of foam covered in floral plastic. They let off a distinctive whooffffff if you sat down on them really quickly. Such fun for a bunch of 6/7/8/9/10-year-old cousins.

There were fun places to hide, like in the garden or the shed, or behind the garage.

The house was half a block from the corner “kaffie”. If we were lucky, Dad would give us each 50c and his blessing to go and buy a packet of chips or a chocolate.

“Just don’t walk in the road,” he would say, without fail. But without fail we would always walk in the road, which was warm and gravelly under our bare feet.

A couple of weeks ago I discovered a new place of wonder: The Art Guesthouse in Schoemansville on the Hartbeespoort Dam. If one were being cheesy, one could say this place puts the art into Harties. (Fortunately, one isn’t.)

The proprietress, Elsa Cornelissen, is a renowned (and rather brilliant imho) wildlife artist. She’s also a real life bone collector.

“I love bones,” she freely admits. “Whenever I visit the Platteland I’m always on the lookout for more to add to my collection.

“Once I went to visit the family farm with my kids. I found a dead chicken and decided to bring it back with me – you know, for the skeleton. My kids were horrified! I had to sneak it into my luggage to bring it back, and hide my clothes in their suitcases to make space.”

Elsa reconstructed the skeleton and created a sculpture out of it.

“We had that thing around the house for many years,” she says. “When we moved I decided it was time to say goodbye. But that chicken taught me a lot about skeletal structure and how birds fit together and move. These things are the building blocks of my art.”

Judging by the number of bones on permanent display at her home, which is also where the guesthouse is located, Elsa has certainly done her anatomy homework – and it shows in her work.

“My aim is to communicate our close bond with animals from the beginning of time,” she says. “We must respect the creatures we share our planet with. This is my starting point whenever I do a painting. I aim to give each animal life through my painting, and by doing so evoke a powerful emotion. The more I know about them physiologically, the better I can represent them. This is how I show respect.”

The entrance to the property is a wild collection of bones, shells, mannequins, palm trees and terracotta pots. There’s a larger-than-life saxophonist sculpture, a soothing water feature and a series of lizards mosaicked into the pathway at the entrance to the property. I wasn’t surprised when she told me there’s a rumour in town that she’s a sangoma.

Our room was an extension of this wonderland. Tree trunks and branches were the prevailing theme, offset by Middle-Eastern fabrics and carpets, intriguing portraits and a couple of wildlife pieces.

Elsa’s attention to detail is apparent in everything, from the bath salts artfully displayed in, you guessed it, tree trunks, to the sachets of coffee for the plunger. Breakfast is a delicious selection of non-egg things.

“I can’t do eggs,” she says. “The yolks break, the shells fall in… it makes me too stressed.”

Expect pancakes, sausages, fruit… whatever Elsa has in her kitchen that didn’t come out of the back of a chicken.

And as for the garden… well, that’s is another blog on its own. It has all those fantastical little nooks and crannies that I used to explore at my grandparents’ place, but for grown-ups.

The Art Guesthouse is a truly magical getaway. We can’t wait to get back – but definitely for a bit longer next time.

Check out The Art Guesthouse Facebook page. And here’s the Elsa Cornelissen Artist website, and her wildlife art Facebook page.