5 - 24 May 2020

I am curious about life, fascinated about life, fascinated and delighted by the fullness of being human. At the same time I am acutely aware of how often we are touched by painful situations. In South Africa we see all around us people suffering from poverty, AIDS, violence and corruption. Although these are issues that are heightened in our society, I know, too, that all people experience suffering.

What I want to do in my drawings is somehow cut through all this, and try to express some of the basic goodness and wise ordinariness we all experience. I want to invoke a sense of delight, to celebrate a way of knowing that reveals life to be both comical and terribly poignant. As an artist I am drawn to the interconnecting spaces, the multiple planes where our inner and outer worlds meet. I want to show where and how men and women see one another, where and how we/they allow our-/themselves (sometimes secretly) to be seen. I paint/ draw/ sew/ anatomize our social and sexual theater, affirming with all my strength a world of both joy and pain. As a woman I am conscious of the body as intimate, while as a painter, I seem to be going through a "breast phase". I love to show breasts as smooth, vulnerable, and touchingly - touchably - joyous.

Unwritten History, 1997/1999, embroidery hoops, thread, fabric, 28 X 47cm
Death makes love, 2003, coffee bags, fabric, embroidery thread and embroidery hoop, 130 X 75 X 65cm
Vagina, 2001/2002, embroidery, variable dimensions