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The pool, a place of ambiguous quietness 2020 | Art Lovers Gallery Pretoria

Artist’s annotation: The pool: a place of ambiguous quietness

In this solo exhibition of paintings of swimming pools, which flowed from the small, south room in Art Lover’s Gallery into the adjacent Trent Gallery, I looked more closely at the ambiguity of the mood of a pool of water. Water seems to act as a receptacle of feeling, a place of changing moods and intensified connection between nature and the solitary contemplator. Like a mirror, a pool reflects the state of mind of the person who contemplates its stillness. It becomes a place of self-reflection and balance (Bachelard, 1983).

In certain paintings (for instance: Invocation), I explored the notion of the pool as a place set apart, a sacred and circumscribed space with distinct potency, an almost palpable atmosphere of a spirit presence (a joyous water sprite). Intricate patterns of fallen petals on the surface of the pool, chrome green from the reflections of a bright green shrub border, are made with daubs of creamy paint, which appear to physically reflect light and form an intriguing lacework that carries the eye across the surface.

In other paintings, for example, Requiem the derelict, neglected condition of the pool touches on those feelings of sadness and loss. The pool is a daily tomb, collecting leaf litter and other drowned debris on its floor (Bachelard, 1983). There is also a broken Kreepy-Crawly lying among the dead leaves. The floor of the pool is a watery grave of bleached skeletal leaves and insects. The pool in this case, is a lidless coffin that collects tears and the passage of time.

There are also paintings in this exhibition where I explore an enveloping sense of wellbeing and exhilaration, where the pool glows with incandescent light and a breeze plays over the water’s surface (Font III). In these works the pool becomes the life-giving fountain at the centre of paradise. I used broken brush mark, dappled surfaces, and complementarycontrasting colours to create optical flickering.

There are a few smaller square paintings in this exhibition where the nourishing, organic quality of a natural ecosystem in a pond is explored. In these, the water is thickened by microscopic organisms to a gelatinous, fecund mucus, very much like nourishing warm milk. The crisp edges of foliage that lies on the water surface contrasts with the mushy, nutritious vegetation under the water. Water that feeds and provides refuge has the quality of the womb and the mother. I have used fat, juicy paint to convey the idea of nourishment. These small pond paintings brimming with life, echo Bachelard’s beautiful words: “There is a universe in a pool of water” (Bachelard, 1983).

This exhibition included a series of found objects (bone china tea-cups with cracks or broken ears) that I fitted with thin super-wood discs, which were painted onto. Each tea-cup appears to be half full, but not of tea. Instead, the surface of a pool or pond painted onto the disc transforms each cup into a miniature pool. The tea-cups are from sets that were passed down to me from great-grandmothers and grandmothers. The cups themselves form the curved edges of ponds and the hand-painted decoration on the outsides of the cups hint at a garden setting. There is the nostalgia of a lost era about these miniature pools.

It is a but a fraction of the metaphorical richness of water and pools that I explored in this body of work


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