Walking on a rim of light
March 24, 2022 - April 19, 2022
Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Bloemfontein
Since moving home and studio from Cape Town to Istanbul, I have continued to work as a painter of the city. In Cape Town, I was drawn to the city’s industrial aspects - the harbour with its oil rigs, ships and peculiar geometry – and to a sense of cultural history, as revealed in the streets and buildings of my neighbourhood, Woodstock.
Drawing is fundamental to me, a way of being in the world. In Istanbul, walking and commuting has become pivotal to the process. Drawing books act as a record of an ongoing process of seeing and composition; chance juxtapositions of ideas and images in their pages set in motion new inquiries. My paintings arise through a flow of observation, memory and sensual information within any moment, often moving through several iterations.
In the studio I work on multiple pieces, simultaneously, in both large and small formats, exploring new possibilities from apparently disparate ideas and images. Some of the paintings become densely layered, travelling further away from the initial source. Others happen more immediately, like drawings on canvas.
‘Radical Innocence’, for example, derives from a large wall collage I made on the wall of my son’s vacated bedroom during lockdown in 2020. Using ID magazines to explore ideas of shifting identity, I was focussing on the impact of recent events on my son’s generation of millenials. The primary blue wall was key to the collage and the painting. As 2020 progressed the painting became more layered. Exploring more ancient figurative sources during visits to Turkey’s archeological sites, new thoughts about the transience of civilizations found expression in layers of evolving colour. Grids of bright primaries and acid complementaries might recall harsh or blurred experiences of virtual information; softer chromatic greys evoke the nearby Bosphorus or the colour of ancient stone. Also referenced is new-found delight in the pattern, texture and cultural references displayed by designers Laduma Ngxokolo @laduma and Duro Olowu @duro-olowu. The painting moves through nature and culture, the harmonious and the dissonant.
