My hubcap arrrived!

my contribution to Landfill Art, a project to turn hubcaps into works of art arrived in Pennsylvania and is on the website.on page 8.

African dreams

"Skeletons in the cave" and "old bones"

"Thinking of the future","Looking ahead", and "Sangoma in training"

"My past is behind me"(oil/paper; 900x600mm)


Last year I did not blog a lot, due to the fact that I was concentrating on my painting and had little time for anything else. I spent the year trying to find a theme that I could really get my teeth into. I usually have trouble concentrating on a particular theme for various reasons. I suspect that as a child I may have suffered a little from Attention Deficit Disorder which was unknown in those days!

From March to October I attended a weekly workshop with a group of artists painting from life. At the end of the year I bundled up all my sketches and drawings from these sessions and forgot about them. Last week I unrolled them again and examined them for any signs of a theme. It is quite difficult to find a theme in your own work, as you tend to be rather too subjective about it, but as I examined these paintings I found that there was an inkling of something that linked them together as a body of work. The paintings that I show here are what I consider to be the best of the bunch.
South Africa is experiencing huge changes politically at present. With a general election looming, times are interesting. The old "Struggle Politics" mentality of the post-Apartheid days seems to be dying and new orders and parties are springing up almost daily. Cope is the main player, though I have a sneaking suspicion this is a red herring created by Mbeki to make South Africa look like a thriving democracy. I suspect that the ANC and COPE will reunite after the election! I hope I am wrong but somehow something does not seem above board with daily defections to and fro on both sides.

Artistically I cannot help but be influenced and affected by what is happening around me and I find that my work during the last year seems to reflect these imminent changes. I feel that African women are going to play a more prominent role in S. African politics in the future and this body of work seems to suggest that theme.