:: 2010 :: 76cm x 30cm in 3 panels :: Acrylics, Gouache, Inks and Markers on Canvas ::
An immediate and instinctive response to a visit to the rock art sites upon Mt Ikanti in the Southern Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa. The surviving art here varies in date from 3000 BC until around 200 years ago when the last San Bushmen came off the mountains and either ran away or intermarried with the Zulu farmers who were arriving into the valleys below. I was lucky enough to be guided on the day by Mdu, a Zulu man of San descent who had learned from his granfather a few spirit and trance songs (which he was kind enough to teach me) as the last embers of the now-dead /Xam-ka-!au language that was spoken in the region. The whole day, throughout the landscape, with Mdu singing and rock art images of dancers, elands and quivers of arrows in my eyes, I felt the immanent presence of the San Bushmen in the trees, streams and grasses of the mountain...
View of the Valley below Mt. Ikanti from rock art site Ikanti II – here I sensed San hunters gazing upon the herds far below
