The Fallen Tree
Gallery MOMO, Johannesburg
May - June 2024
This exhibition, curated by Odysseus Shirindza, collects a body of work made during a 7-month residency with the Hugo Burge Foundation in Scotland, where I occupied the former studio and cottage of renowned artist and musician, the late Rory McEwen. The work was presented in conversation with a masterpiece by Jackson Hlungwani.
During the intensive residency, I was able to dive deeper into an already existing relationship with nature. The paintings harnessed their colours from the late autumnal blaze as he began the residency in 2023, each day introducing a new colour into my palette. Not long after I arrived I began incorporating wood carving into my practice. I was gifted a century-old Cedar tree which fell during storm Arwen (November 2021) on the Marchmont Estate nearby the studio and set about carving it in sections with a chainsaw, grinder and various hand tools. The surface of the wood was then charred and finally finished with beeswax.
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“Much of my work comes from an urge to immerse myself in a devotional relationship with nature. To bow at her feet. Making this work has taken me into a kind of quietly ecstatic state at times, amplified by the silence of long periods of being completely alone which this residency allowed. The work comes from a space of inner contemplation and deep immersion in nature. I am trying to make a link between higher energies and my body. I want the things I make to speak this language, to resonate as much as possible with this awareness.”
Hugo Burge Foundation, Residency
Through the winter of 2023/24 I worked in a remote, rural studio cottage in the Scottish Borders, formerly owned by the late, great artist and musician, Rory McEwen.
One of the reasons I began searching for a studio in the countryside, which ultimately led me to this residency with The Hugo Burge Foundation was to be in direct, daily contact with nature, to find a connection with silence and to have an intensely solitary experience surrounding my practice. Enveloped by this silence I have found life there equally magical and difficult. New ways of working emerged and a new and wonderful language for me, carving wood. Drawing returned to the centre my life, bringing an energy of its own. After a strange and difficult alienation I rediscovered my joy for painting too.
Not all of it was easy, and yet as I emerged from the 7 months there I’m certain that the most constant of all the feelings was Joy. A joy that came from feeling my body respond to the delicate awe of being connected to nature, being woven into the substance of these fields, rivers, trees.
The works made during the residency were presented at Gallery MOMO in Johannesburg, and at Bard in Edinburgh.
Spirit Matter, Nirox Foundation
Nirox Foundation, Cradle of Humankind
November 2022 - January 2023
The exhibition with The Nirox Foundation presents a range of paintings made during my residency at NIROX, July & August 2022. With the Spirit Matter series, I am painting in reverse. The canvas is dyed with a dark black or indigo. I then begin bleaching parts of the surface to reveal lighter areas. The process happens slowly, in many layers, as I attempt to encourage an ethereal light into the artwork. The result is hopefully very open and suggestive of a numinous experience. The paintings are not depictions of Spirit, how can one paint the invisible? Rather, they are an evocation, an echo, a vapour. They point towards a presence you catch out of the corner of your eye, just before it slips away.
Spirit Matter, Gallery MOMO
Gallery MOMO, Johannesburg
November 2022
These works were made in my Edinburgh studio and then during a residency at the Nirox Foundation in the Cradle of Humankind in July and August, 2022. The incredible space at Nirox opened new possibilities in the work, both in technique and scale. The paintings appear simultaneously as portals and as veils and come from an instinct for a kind of light that I have felt all of my life.