2022 - 2023 - A Sum of Days

I began this series of drawings in January 2022. I had 24 blank sheets of vintage paper, bound together in book form. They offered me a perfect ground for exploring Botswana ochre and the relationships between their colour ranges and textures. It was exciting to work on a more intimate scale. The bordered format of each drawing resulted in an enclosed space, animated by the Botswana ochre watercolours and the energy of the life within my garden.

I listened, saw and felt the life the garden contained, down to the curiously beautiful patterns traced in the verandah tiles at my feet, organic, lacy, leaflike images drawn by geology and time, the dendrites. I enjoyed the idea that though there are borders to both garden and drawing, life continually breaks in and out.

In my garden, I can explore being, in relation to other life forms that surround me. I use concentric lines of graphite, drawn on top of the ochre pigments that I have ground and processed into watercolours. The graphite lines are like the contours of a map. They signify a spatial location for all the images in the work. They also reference fingerprints and personal identities. The use of Botswana Earth helps to embed me in the landscapes I create and gives me a sense of belonging in a place in which I have been self-transplanted. The Frangipani is indigenous to South America, not Africa but we have both flourished here, in this garden.