Welcome

INSPIRATION

Growing up in Knysna and with a long family history in the area and an adventurous father who was also a naturalist and a writer, I slowly became aware of the rich and detailed environment around me through countless expeditions throughout the Southern Cape. We caught blacktail in swirling gullies on Robberg, looked for the elusive leopard spoor in muddy forest tracks and shot grey wing partridges in the snowy mountains of the Langkloof.

With these experiences too came an interest in the ancient human footprint on the landscape. The many stone artefacts which can still be found in specific areas, the thousands of fading San rock paintings in the mountains and the extensive middens stretching along our coastline. More recent archaeological evidence from caves such as Blombos, Nelsons’ Bay and Pinnacle Point, reveal an almost unbroken human occupation (coupled with sophisticated cultural and social awareness) for hundreds of thousands of years, suggesting the area may have been the birth place of our modern human behaviour some one hundred thousand years ago.

INFLUENCE

My work is essentially influenced by my passion, involvement and interest in living forms within the landscape, both from deep history and distant future. And how we as a global species live in, disturb, mark and use this space. We share this environment and interact with millions of other usually smaller animals and plants and they, in turn adapt to us as we quickly become more disconnected from the land that originally forged us. We are now one of the most prolific and successful species ever, opening up a completely new human niche of mass communal urban living culminating in the large cities that we know today.

Living very temporarily on this earth I feel we as a species have travelled an incredible journey so far and have an even more stunning distant undreamt of future, which fills me with hope and optimism for us as a continuing evolving animal - Homo Sapien sapiens.

The future influences the present just as much as the past.
– Friedrich Nietzsche.