Losing Friends

This is my one and only still life. It was my discovery of oil and with each and every brushstroke I had the feeling that my long-since-dead grandmother was behind me and assisting in the process. For this reason, this painting is incredibly important to me and this constant feeling of not being alone in my painting led to a rather haunting portrayal of something as mundane as garlic. Unfortunately the background cannot be seen in this photograph. It is 15 layers of acrylic, carmine red over pthalo green, with scrubbing sessions between each layer, which resulted in a slightly blackened mottled effect. I saw it as a challenging goal to take something as "traditional" as a still life and place it in an exposed and naked context... 40cm x 40cm acrylic and oil on hardboard

Invasion

Another insect painting - and my favourite. As I've mentioned, all of my insect paintings deal with some or other social condition. This painting conjures up thoughts of uninvited guests, landing and presenting themselves in all of their unwelcomed arrogance. This kind of horror scenario can very easily be found in our world. We need only look at president Bush and the infantile manner in which he insists on bombarding and entering places where he - or at least his troops - are not wanted; like a teenager addicted to a playstation game. Yes, as hard as this may sound, my insects represent the American troops under the "Bush" regime. It is, however, only inadvertantly political, as this is, for me, foremost a psycho-social issue. I do not know enough about politics to make bold statements about governmental dos and don'ts. What I do know - through my five-year psychology study - is how to spot a psychopath and how to spot when a psychopath is running a country..... 50cm x 1m oil on canvas

Untitled 1

Draw your own conclusions. All I want to say is that the girl sitting on the ball/egg makes me think of my sister - for some reasons all girls in my paintings will always be my sister. I must love her a lot :) Or maybe it's just because as a gay man it's difficult to relate to the female figure as being that of any other person other than someone from your immediate family... Who knows??? 20cm x 20cm oil on hardboard

Cleaning up

In our hurly-burly world, there is no greater luxury than space. This, coupled with my strong respect for, and love of, the simplicity of "taken-for-granted" objects and how they are placed in our environment led to this painting. In this painting, I tried to encapsulate this unchaotic sense of space - something that has grown stronger in me over the years from having moved from a country with lots of room to breathe to a country where your neighbours are always staring into your window. This painting is a shot of my kitchen - a space such as I have explained - bathed in the warmth of the afternoon sun filtering through two windows directly opposite the sink. I tried to capture the atmosphere of typical European Spring lighting (a concept that is rather foreign to somebody from South Africa where the definite four seasons in one year is not a reality). I hope that the comfort and coziness comes across and fills the observer with feelings of homeliness. When I first painted this, it filled me with a sense of loneliness, but it really affects me differently now. Please feel free to leave comments if you like... 80cm x 60cm oil on linen

Pipe ballet

This painting is a continuation of my insects theme with a somewhat humorous slant. I think it looks a little like the beetle is dancing inside a pipe. Having spent countless hours studying the look of various insects, I have uncovered a deep respect for the complexity of their anatomical make-up. I mean they really are like little monsters - and they are all around us. I suppose that this is why I wanted the painting to come across as more playful than threatening... 40cm x 40cm oil on canvas

Socket

Not much to say about this one. I felt like painting something really simple with a rather haunting background - or at least it's haunting for me... 30cm x 90cm oil on canvas

Stigmata

This one is a little off track, but it deals with something that I feel really strongly about, that is the obedient acceptance by children of dogma and religious rules and regulations. The teddy bears symbolise that innocence that is so brutally "stigmata-ed" in the psyches of children and their optimistic hope of moving towards a space devoid of pressure and prejudice. (For those of you who don't know, stigmata is the supposed bleeding of the palms of staunt Christians). I only chose the Christian religion as it is the doctrine closest to my Western way of thinking that symbolises the concept of dogma. I could just as easily have chosen a symbol from Islam or Judaism.... 50cm x 1m oil and embroidered wool on linen (Very proud of my two embroidered trees. You should have seen my fingers afterwards... :()

Solace

This is going to be a bit chaotic. I intend on putting the paintings into categories in multiple blogs which will exist as links on the main page, but I need to do a little homework first to work out how to do it...

This - seemingly abstract painting - is of the inside of my coffee mug (The white and orange-brown is the bottom and the grey on the left and the big of grey on the corners of the right are the sides of the inside of the mug). It really looks the same every morning. It is a space that I know very well and a smell that I can wallow in for endless moments. I never wash it after having had my coffee, but rather allow the coffee rests to crystalize along the bottom. Looking into this mug is something I do every morning before I am forced to wash the beautiful orange-brown coffee stains from the cup so as to allow for another boost of my daily caffeine. This painting thus illustrates very much a part of my daily activities and is very much a view that fills me with calm and fulfillment... 90cm x 60cm oil on canvas

This is me

This is me, the face behind the paint brush. The left pic is the way I look when I don't look like the right pic and the right pic is the way I usually look (at least I did 3 years ago).