Shades of Red - Johann van Heerden Art Gallery

Group Show, 4 - 27 February 2024

This is a group exhibition curated to focus on artworks primarily in red. My submission is a landscape of the view looking towards Hebronberg from the mountain pass up to Mariepskop. View from Mariepskop is inspired by a recent trip I did to help researchers relocate the original plants from which the type specimen of a miniature African violet (Streptocarpus decipiens) was collected more than 50 years ago. Access to the top of the mountain, Hebronberg, is very tricky as the plateau is surrounded by a fortress of cliffs and the only roads to the base of the mountain have washed away since timber plantations on the mountainside were abandoned 20 years ago to restore the landscape to natural grassland to be included in the Blyde Canyon Nature Reserve. This is a painting of the slopes one has to navigate to reach the top of the cliffs and the area now slowly returning to natural grassland, which was once covered in alien pines, introduced for the timber industry.