About The ArtistMy creative process expresses multiple methods of making sense of, and attempting to map diverse journeys in life. The shimmer of recognition in the gentle eye-lock of a passer-by, the kind smile reciprocated by a stranger, snapshots portrayed through various series portraying multiple faces, often overlayed, as if looking through several viewpoints at once. Diverse and culturally opposite as we may be outwardly, in these moments, I find that the gold hidden within the grit and grid of the human map, is our unity. Constructing and deconstructing, like digging and covering up, creating and scratching it away, became more entrenched as my method. Processing the palimpsest situations encountered during journeys to and from my studios in August House, New Doornfontein and Lilian Street, Fordsburg (2018 – 2021). Empathy for these worlds beyond the gated communities and security fences of suburbia, where disintegrating infrastructure and lack of service delivery not only caused inconvenience, but often threated the lives of toddlers, teens, mothers and working women alike. The joys and commonalities of our humanity appear varied at first glance, based on location, yet at the root, we share the same basic needs and driving forces. To view life through the eyes of a stranger, brings new opportunities and solutions to old problems. In my studio on a farm in the Western Cape, the views are spectacular as I work in isolation, yet no more so than I was in my city studios, surrounded by the hussle on the city streets. The work of the artist, I have concluded, is solitary in nature which is what brings out the sweet tones in the work. The implementation of mixed media appears hap-hazard and frenetic as it mirrors diversity vs commonality. Multi-coloured threads knit together ideas as art medium and process are given ad lib roles on my art-making stage, materialising in an unexpected, silent and invisible beauty emerging from apparent chaos. I employ a versatile command of drawing, painting, printing, cartography, scratching and stitching skills during meditative repetitive processes to track and make visible invisible trajectories to guide both artist and viewer into deeper consciousness of what it means to belong, and to occupy one’s ‘being’. Artist CV
EXHIBITIONS
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