INTERVIEW Christy Quilliam
Based in New Zealand, Angela Maritz moves between countries and cultures. Of English and South African descent, she describes her upbringing as one that has been shaped by contrast – different cultures, perspectives, and ways of seeing the world. That duality now finds its way onto her canvas, where bold colour meets layered feeling and where no two works settle in quite the same place. “I want the work to feel alive” she says, “to reveal itself over time.”
Afternoon in Paradise
In a bright yellow shirt, oversized red-rimmed glasses and a halo of blonde curls, she carries a warmth that is immediate and disarming. Her wide smile and easy laughter suggest openness, but beneath the vibrant exterior is an artist whose work is rooted in something quieter and more complex: emotion, identity, and the courage to be seen.
Mountains Sunshine Streams
That sense of evolution is central to her current project: a five-year residency at the Peninsula All-Suite Hotel in South Africa. Whilst there, Maritz is creating original artworks for 110 suites as part of a large-scale refurbishment, aimed at reimagining each space through contemporary art. But for Maritz, the project is as much about process as it is about outcome.
Islands In The Stream
Each piece begins as the process and emotional drive progresses to paint touching canvas. Through journals, personal photographs and written reflections, she documents the emotional and visual threads that shape her work. For years, her newsletters have offered an unfiltered window into her practice, capturing not just inspiration, but uncertainty, doubt and growth.
Flowers From Venice
Dreams of Rain
That transparency hasn’t always come easily. Maritz speaks candidly about the self-doubt that once held her back from fully stepping into her identity as an artist. For a long time, creativity sat alongside hesitation. The turning point, she suggests, was not a single moment but a gradual shift – an acceptance that art does not need to impress, only to connect, and her work leans into that philosophy.
Tigerlily
Described as gestural, emotive and immersive, her paintings draw from the world around her – landscapes, flora, and abstract emotional states, translated through sweeping strokes and vivid palettes. There is movement in her work, but also stillness; a sense that each piece holds something unresolved, waiting for the viewer to meet it halfway. She is less interested in perfection than in resonance. “It’s about letting the emotion linger” she says, “letting people feel something of their own.”
Forest Greens and Lakes
That intention to create a shared, human response sits at the centre of her practice. Her work does not ask to be understood in a traditional sense, but to be experienced. To pause, to notice, to feel. In that way, Angela Maritz’s art mirrors the artist herself: bold on the surface, deeply reflective underneath, and constantly unfolding.
Let Them Bloom
“Painting allows me to feel fully alive. Feeling alive means feeling content to feel however I feel.” Angela Maritz
Afternoon in Paradise