The Work

The Helderberg series of paintings represents a departure from my previous South African inspired landscape work. In 1998 when I returned briefly to the Cape, it was a revelation to realise that for the first time I was psychologically free to contemplate this magnificent landscape in terms of a ‘viewpoint’.

My previous work was always a ‘construction’ of the South African landscape in terms of natural forces and in generic language such as ‘forest’, ‘mountain’, or ‘field’. The Helderberg series of paintings is inspired by a sense of place. The viewpoint suggests a specific content quite different from that of a mental construct or generic type.

The name ‘Helderberg’ now replaces that of the ‘Hottentots Holland’. This in itself is a sign of the momentous changes taking place in South Africa today. But changing the name does not erase its colonial history, the loss of the indigenous population, the demise of its beasts, or the typical structures and imprints of Europe in Africa.

This last is now the most striking contemporary aspect of the landscape. And although the land is rapidly giving way to housing and suburbia, an expanse of agricultural structures bears ample witness to that major transition from the land of the nomads to the vineyards of Willem Adrian van der Stel in 1699.

The need to express something transcendent yet coexistent with the ceaseless animation of nature was uppermost at the time. This is the province of my birth. The difficulty, as with numerous landscapes of Europe, resides in the memory of the slaves who toiled here and built the vast estate of Vergelegen. Their work shaped this landscape and binds its content to form a dark majestic quality that is unfathomable. The structures are typical of the landscapes of the Mediterranean and could be mistaken for Europe if it were not for the strange colouring and the remains of the original ‘fynbos’ in the nature reserve (foreground). As in Europe, the original vegetation is everywhere under threat of extinction. For the moment however, this balanced and classical landscape provides food for thought in a changing world.