The 24″x 30″ works illustrated here were made on site in Botswana. The larger works are based on field sketches but were made in the studio. All works are oil on aluminum panel. The titles are incomplete at this point. Click the thumbnails and click once again to see larger images.
I’ve been working in a pool house this week developing seven new pictures. Five of them are far enough along to share. They are a little more unfinished than usual, but I leave tomorrow for a road trip to the Makgadikgadi salt pans and the the Tuli Block, a game preserve. They’ll have to wait [...]
Woman’s Rock rises from a dry stream bed, whose sand has forever recorded the tracks of animals and humans who cross it. Rising from the flat landscape like the back of an enormous snake… the summit of Woman’s rock is gently curved hinting at the enormity of the coil that is hidden below. And the [...]
Although the Tropic of Capricorn runs through the middle of this dry and warm country, there is sledding in Botswana. Rre Motsewabeng demonstrated his technique on the side of a steep kopje, a dome of rock of that protrudes from the flat sand sheet that covers most of the country. As a boy, he and [...]
Motsewabeng Motsewabeng sat outside his compound in southern Botswana. It was mid-morning and he was relaxing by the gate, tending to a black kettle sitting over a little fire. We spoke through an interpreter, my travel companion and fellow artist Meleko Mokgosi, who translated from Setswana to English so that I could follow the conversation. [...]
The surface of Southern Africa is hatched with walls. From the air Johannesburg looks like a circuit board in which every choice bit is surrounded by a barrier that requires an access code. In Gaborone, the capital of Botswana and my current home, the growing suburbs are collections of enclosures whose walls and gates hint [...]
