Notes from my delightfully sarcastic offspring, on growing up with an artist mother…

• Complementary colours were old hat before I was five
• One eye squint and fingers measuring the view means it’s going to be a long trip
• Seeing distant smoke and driving towards it to study the veld fire
• Artwork taking seating precedence in the car
• Not knowing what to say when asked “are you an artist like your mother?”
• My first playdate and I come home to report that it was fun, but I don’t know where their studio is
• Fighting my way down the passage through a forest of paintings
• What do you mean I can’t doodle in class?
• Aprons behind the kitchen door, more paint than food on them
• Strange music
• Can I eat this, or is Mom painting it?
• “All fruit looks like vaginas”
• Please go fetch the cerulean blue plate
• Knowing no one in your family will ever play rugby
• Suddenly, during play season, she’s the most popular mother at school, makes up for her absences when she paints the backdrop
• Squinting at me like I’m a painting
• Is that painting of me; am I sleeping or dead?
• Gallery finger food, Saturday lunch
• No Prestik, but kneadable erasers work too
• Living in a house that’s purple, but only we can tell that it’s not brown
• Never any HB pencils, only 8B or 2H
• Graceful, last-minute and relentlessly aesthetic approach to everything, including science projects
• Home time and she is photographing the lichens on the trees in the school parking

Wales is not everyone’s dream destination; it’s a bit too soggy for that. It does have a wonderful coastal path that goes from one end of the country to the other (1400km). This path is treacherous in parts, definitely not adhering to health and safety standards that are so prevalent in this nanny state. We bumped into Bob, who was slip-sliding his way along the path and his only concession to health and safety was his neon green reflector jacket. Bob made us guess his age (he was born when Winston Churchill first became Prime Minister was our clue). We asked where he was headed and he said Mwnft, or something like that. The language is also a bit odd, with a strng lck f vwls (strange lack of vowels).
We stayed in a restored stable https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/14098945?s=UYwfGb5B  The farm is owned by a young couple who have possibly watched too many episodes of Grand Designs and hoped to restore the farm while commuting from the city and raising several children. The challenges are numerous and fortunately not mine. I could relate to the pioneering spirit of their venture, the underfloor heating and dream bathroom, the windows looking on to the four fields and the wild sea; my kind of place.
The plan was to walk on the coastal path to Fishguard, a tiny fishing harbour. It was actually raining when we set off, so I (being African) thought we should retreat to the underfloor heating and half metre thick walls. My sister (being anglicised) felt it was a lovely day. We crossed the four fields of the farm, waded through grass (again, a mixture of Viridian Green and Lemon Yellow) and clambered over lichen encrusted walls. As we got closer to the glassy, Paynes Grey sea, we froze. I knew that sound, a primal explosion of bubbles and wailing that echoed in the caves below…hippos! Peering gingerly over the edge of the cliff we spied the giant Atlantic Seals and their snow white babies (they looked like squirming maggots from up there).
Bravely, we stuck to the plan, stopping for sustenance at a formerly grand seaside hotel that is a blend of the Durban Country Club and something out of Dirty Dancing. We ate cream, with scones and tea, surrounded by content elderly people and a disapproving barman who doubled as the waiter during the day. Next stop was Fishguard, where we hung around the town square hoping to work out which bus to take. Because she spent too long living in London, anglicised sister was nervous to ask the bus drivers. Plucking up the courage, we hopped onto a bus. The bus driver was strong looking, with lots of piercings and she scowled at us. We explained our plight, gesturing in the general direction of where we had come from. She broke into a broad smile and said “Oh that will be near Buv nd Juff’s (Bev and Jeff) place”, take a seat”.
I couldn’t have felt further from home and more at home all at once.

Opening 11 June at Gallery 2 in Johannesburg is a joint show with Jaco van Schalkwyk and Delene Human. The exhibition is called Passage and has allowed me to pursue the idea of ‘belonging’ and ‘landscape’ even further. I am still feeling strongly, the tug and vocabulary of my 2014 exhibition called Welcome Stranger and an extract from my artist’s statement best describes this.
“Migration is pervasive. Out of necessity, it often happens quietly. In these works, the refugees leave silent traces of their journey through water, sand and mountains. I asked myself what I would take if I had to leave, and I saw that African women take fabric. With it around her, a woman can seem regal and even happy. She might even feel these things. These flashes of colour push back despair; they conceal and express at the same time.”
In some of the new work, the fabric is still present and in others there are other subtle signs that people have passed through the landscape.

Makeshift dwellings interspersed with organised structures as far as the eye could see. This has worked its way into my painting. I have never been to a refugee camp in the desert, but I often try to wrap my head around the broad concept of being homeless and anonymous, and so I project myself into these situations. In the midst of the bigger picture, some things must happen for life to continue; washing is done, trading happens and children play. Looking at these new ‘towns’, it is possible to see two things evolving simultaneously. The bigger grid, straight lines and wide thoroughfares are established by large organisations and punctuated by permanent structures. Then there are the more organic shapes made by small roads and footpaths, ground worn down by people accessing smaller businesses, informal traders, hairdressers, people connecting in a real way, out of necessity, under the most dire circumstances.

The pieces of fabric that appear in many of my paintings reference this. I asked myself what I would take if I had to leave, and I saw that African women take fabric. I scattered my collection of African fabrics on the floor and painted them as if lost at sea. Every cloth is regional and has meaning. With it around her, a woman can seem regal and even happy. She might even feel these things. These flashes of colour push back despair; they conceal and express at the same time. (Welcome Stranger exhibition) Perhaps because I am not an active participant in these situations, the paintings have a sense of hovering above, a suspension of the nitty gritty in favour of a distant view. A reality that is impossible to internalise becomes an image that slowly allows me to come to terms with more. Each brush mark helps to build a picture. My small hope is that the viewer of the painting feels this too.

“Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.” D.W. Winnicott.

Donald Winnicott (psychoanalyst born in 1896) was onto something. His best known work focused on what he calls True Self and False Self. He described False Self as “Other people's expectations can become of overriding importance, overlaying or contradicting the original sense of self, the one connected to the very roots of one's being”.

Speaking only for myself, it is this tension that makes ‘being an artist’ such an odd occupation. Months spent alone in the studio, digging deep and scratching around for ways to make things visual, the meditation, the highs and the lows, the doubts, the eye strain and the neck pain, the endless conversation between me and the work. I don’t set out to find my ‘true self’ but when I come close to it, the work rings true too.

And then this private and absorbing process is abruptly interrupted. To sustain my odd occupation, others must see the work (and hopefully like it too). I have learnt to say goodbye to work that is to be sold, to find energy in the making and not in the having. Occasionally it is hard to say goodbye, or the departure is too sudden, before I have internalized the lessons.

That moment when the bubble wrap covers the painting and partially obscures the image is the beginning of that transition from the private to the public. “Bye-bye painting, I hope I made you strong enough to live in the real world!”

So next time you chat to an artist at an exhibition, know that they may be trying really hard to overcome their desire to hide. Talk to them anyway.