Mother Nature in Monotype - Curating project - The Printing Girls

MOTHER NATURE in MONOTYPE

2021

White River Gallery, Mpumalanga

The Printing Girls (TPGs) is an informal group of South African female artists who work in the specialised medium of printmaking.

We are a dedicated professional community, collaborative in nature, offering each other support and technical help with a spirit of generosity. We are beginning to exhibit widely and are sparking interest on the local art scene.

MOTHER NATURE in MONOTYPE

This exhibition was our first in Mpumalanga, running at White River Gallery throughout August 2021.

This exhibition catalogue also shows the works of 39 TPG members along with their artists’ statements …

There are some beautiful interpretations of our theme.

Mother Nature in Monotype – Curator’s statement

To acknowledge our Women’s Day month as well as the beautiful natural environment of not only the White River region but our entire beautiful country, we chose a theme that links any aspects of the feminine with the South African natural world. This offered the TPG artists the opportunity for a wide interpretation.

We decided to limit the printmaking medium to the use of monotypes, a more visually soft technique suited to the essences of nature and womanhood. Working in monotype encourages a looser, organic style and a degree of spontaneity, with the artist having a certain lack of control over the outcome.

Due to our overall number of members and the size of the gallery, we also decided to limit the paper size to 35 x 50 cm or less and allow only up to 3 works per artist for the gallery wall.

Thirty-nine TPGs picked up this challenge and their work shows just how diverse and exciting print work is when limited by theme, technique, and size. Some folk think that limits will detract from the quality of an exhibition, but in real life, all artists have constraints of some sort - whether space to work in, budget for material costs, time available for artmaking, or enough physical strength – and true creativity lies in the ways that artists overcome their constraints.

What is an editioned original print?

When an artist makes a series of original prints, she creates a matrix - a surface that she has made marks on. Then, by applying ink to the surface of the matrix, she transfers the ink to the paper – this is sometimes called an impression.

By applying the ink and transferring it to the paper in the same way each time, she will create a number of near-identical impressions. Remember making potato prints as a child? It’s pretty much the same principle! Though a lot more technically sophisticated …

By limiting the number of impressions, she creates a limited edition of prints. Once that edition has been documented as such, she is not allowed to pull any more of these identical impressions from that matrix.

What is a monotype?

As well as a technique used to create traditional editioned prints, printmaking has become more experimental and spontaneous over the past few decades. A monotype is also an impression but is a one-off impression. There are many ways to create a monotype, and here are brief descriptions of the techniques used for the works in this exhibition.

A trace monotype – this is a hand-printed technique

The artist rolls up a solid patch of ink onto a glass or perspex surface, lays a piece of paper on top and then draws, rubs or makes marks using tools on the back of the paper. When the paper is peeled off, the pressure of these marks have transferred ink onto the paper – a trace monotype. The ink left on the surface remains as a layer of ink with these marks removed. Another sheet of paper may be laid down and when the back is rubbed vigorously this inked image is transferred onto the paper – a ghost monotype.

The artist has now created two prints, one a ‘positive’ image and the other a ‘negative’ image. Neither image can be reproduced.

The following two monotype techniques may be hand-printed or run through an etching press

A subtractive monotype

Again, the artist rolls up a solid patch of ink onto a clean sheet of glass or perspex. Here, marks are made by removing ink using pencils, sticks, earbuds, or even the artist’s fingers. The ink may also be removed using paintbrushes dipped in methylated spirits or laying various objects or cut-outs on top of the ink to work as stencils or to lift off the ink to create a texture. Once finished, damp paper is laid over the inked surface and rubbed or run through an etching press to transfer the image from the surface to the paper. This is a subjective monotype. If sufficient ink is left on the surface, the printing process can be repeated and the resulting second print will be lighter, known as a ‘ghost print’.

An additive monotype

Here the artist uses a clean sheet of glass or perspex as a canvas, painting or making marks directly onto the surface with printing ink. This is the closest printmaking technique to oil painting. Once finished, damp paper is laid over the inked surface and rubbed or run through an etching press to transfer the image from the surface to the paper. This is an additive monotype. If sufficient ink is left on the surface, this process can be repeated and the resulting second print will be lighter, known as a ‘ghost print’.

A Gel plate monotype

This is created in the same way as a subjective monotype. But this time the printing surface is a ‘gelli’ plate, a hand-molded plate composed of gelatin and water. Again, the artist rolls up a solid patch of ink onto the surface and images are built up by using stencils or by pressing and removing textured objects. It’s a wonderful technique for using natural materials such as grasses, leaves, or tree bark.

Once finished, a dry sheet of paper is laid across the plate and is hand-rubbed to transfer the image from the surface to the paper. Similarly, a ‘ghost’ print may be rubbed, or extra ink work can be added before being re-pulled.

Watercolour monotype – this technique must be run through an etching press

The artist takes a clean sheet of perspex that has been lightly sanded to give the surface a ‘tooth’. Watercolour is applied to the surface using any traditional watercolour technique, such as washes or linework, and areas may be removed with water. Watercolour pencils or crayons may also be used. Once the paint is dry, the plate is run through an etching press with damp paper – the dampness of the paper and the pressure of the press reactivate the water-based pigments and transfer the image from the surface to the paper. Similar to other monotype techniques, a ‘ghost’ print may be pulled, or the ‘ghost image may be overworked with more pigments before puling the print.

Screenprint monotype

Here the artist paints with watercolour and/or draws with graphite pencils or charcoal onto the mesh of a screenprint screen. Again, any paint must be left to dry. Using a screenprint squeegee with heavy pressure, a water-based screenprint medium is forced through the screen across the image, transferring the image from the screen. Again, if sufficient pigment remains on the screen, a ‘ghost print’ may be pulled, or the image may be reworked first.

Allison Klein

My work seeks to respond to my immediate environment in a personal and socially conscious way. By exploring the female archetype and well known literary, female characters, I try to present an alternative modern narrative. In these new mixed media pieces, my aim is to draw parallels between the themes in Bible stories about women and female sexuality, and continued attitudes towards women in our modern society. Partially concealed subtexts are implied by the visual elements in the compositions. The female figure in these works is intended to question the oppositional gaze of the voyeur. Is she the protagonist or the victim? Is she the temptress or the martyr? Women are seen not only as victims of random forces of violence or sexual harassment, but also as someone who invites her own fate.

Amy Jane Van den Bergh (Pretoria)

When I first moved back 'home' to Pretoria at the end of 2019, I was reminded of the generous beauty and lush landscape it poured out to those who would look for it. The welcome summer storms; the full, overgrown, green gardens; and the huge variety of wild birds taking up residence in our backyards. When lockdown 2020 hit, my garden became my sanctuary, my respite from the confines of inside of my house and head. This body of work is a way for me to say thank you to nature for the rejuvenating and hopeful spirit with which it continues to inspire me.

Andie Rodwell

I am a printmaker based in Cape Town. I began this form of artistic expression after moving here from the Lowveld two years ago.

The term Mother Nature conjures parallels with the maternal instinct to nourish, nurture, and protect, but primarily the mother figure is one that gives life. If one looks at nature and the embodiment of these attributes, the lone bee is a vital link to the survival of our earthly plant kingdom by pollinating well over 1000 flowers in a day, providing sustenance to most living organisms in nature. So, I chose the concept of a single bee to illustrate its profound attribute as a giver of life to our natural world and all that represents Mother Nature. The hand-stitched thread is based on a matrix which depicts one bee’s pollination flight path over several plants, continuing the ongoing theme of geometric patterns and shapes which inform my work.

Angelique Bougaard

I have created this screenprint monotype as an ode to the environment through using a handmade paper that contains pulp painting and embedding. Here, I express my admiration for the environment while subtly alluding to the pain of its destruction. Uprooted, the plant’s fate is inevitable, it will slowly wither away. The artwork captures its beauty and preserves its memory.

Ann Ludwig (Knysna, Eastern Cape)

I began printmaking a few years ago and loves its unpredictability, finding it the perfect vehicle to create quirky imagery. My ideas are inspired by a love of literature, theatre, art history, and nature. For a few years, I’ve been working on a series of prints inspired by R L Stevenson’s “Travels with a Donkey”. The idea is for my main protagonists (a donkey, cat, and jester) to journey through episodes in literature, history, and place.

After a recent 5-month sojourn in the UK, I returned to South Africa and relocated to Knysna from my old home in Johannesburg. During this English midwinter and strict Covid lockdown, I longed for African blue skies, open spaces, and lush foliage. Although the theme of the donkey, cat and jester was still at the back of my mind, I changed focus to include imagery which resonated with this longing for Africa: lush vegetation and birds.

Glimpse of Paradise

Cloudia Rivett-Carnac

As an appreciator of nature, I spend as much time as I can outdoors whether it be in my own garden or further beyond the confines of the city itself. I yearn to leave the city behind and live within the solitude and calmness of nature. Lockdown in all its stages has definitely limited my capacity to fulfil these yearnings and settle the feeling of unrest I experience every day in the city. My usual weekly escape into nature by going hiking has become limited, so I spend time reminiscing about the opportunities I have had to lose myself in what really matters to me- the natural world. As Vincent van Gogh stated, “If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere”.

by the River

says a Leopard can’t change her spots?

Donna Solovei

I’ve chosen to incorporate and make artworks from nature itself, feeling that the cyanotype technique would be the perfect method for this. I combined sticks, twigs, leaves, flowers, and other parts of nature to form compositions, as well as the beautiful, natural elements of fire (sun) and water to produce the artworks. At the time, I was emerged in nature in a mountain cottage outside Robertson in the Cape. Other pieces were made from an experience in the Cederberg, where I lay by the reservoir below weaverbirds building their nests, faithful to the intelligence and wonder of nature. It was a lovely experience to use a ‘Paul Klee’ technique for creating artworks. These outdoor studios allowed me to capture fragments, colours, and textures of nature, and to appreciate their uniqueness - not to mention that it was a space to dream of tropical places too.

monotype

Elizabeth Tristram (Pretoria)

My work explores symbolism in everyday objects, often in a tongue-in-cheek way. The Ornament, or vessel series is a collection of monotypes reflecting on the connection between the bias that society has about artists who choose to paint representationally, and the role of women as object and vessel.

Elize de Beer

These monotypes explore the elements of bookbinding and printmaking given us by Mother Nature, used to create prints and backings for book spines. Paper that we print on and use for book pages, bookcloth for covers, thread for bookbinding, and mull or tarlatan as backings for book spines, Here I use mull as a stencil since it has liner elements similar to a ¾ book cover, cut out the style lines to emulate a well-used book cover, and created circular cut outs to show the books’ cover title, and drew reductively into these spaces. This ’book’ is for her and the trees she has made and sacrificed to give us our creative tools. Trees, with deeply spread roots. In this work I wanted to use these natural elements in an abstract way, exploring the textures and tones within those materials though making stencils and marks - in my own way celebrating all these materials that form such a part of my practice, as well as my inspiration from Bauhaus artworks.

Ghosted Book of The Trees

Elrie Joubert

Especially before the 16th century, nature tended to be viewed as a kind and benevolent mother who nurtured and provided for her children’s needs. But another less sympathetic image of women also developed over time, when she became to be associated with the ‘other’, disorder and chaos. With my monotypes and some wordplay, I delve into these notions that are so often projected upon women.

This printing technique is a combination of oil-based inks applied onto a piece of plexiglass and this inked surface is reworked by adding textures and tonal values. The final image is then transferred to wet Fabriano paper using a printing press.

Nés

Esther Simonis

Marching Orders: All these women come together with one goal in mind. Each act with the same purpose - to achieve better circumstances for their families and friends. They stand together with one accord: ‘In unity is strength!’ Soon they will get their marching orders and move forward.

Sunshine Girl: I was inspired by some quotes as I created this artwork: ‘The day will be what you make it, so rise, like the sun and burn’ ‘Do what makes your soul shine’ ‘Keep shining beautiful one. The world needs your light’ In this time of crisis, positive encounters count a lot, and we learn to appreciate the beautiful things around us. A laugh from a child, a friend’s song, the wind through the trees, the splashing of the waves, all these things have more and deeper meaning for us nowadays. Life’s small moments of love and care became miracles, and with more time for meditation and prayer, hope exists more in our vocabulary.

Suddenly I have more freedom to create - more of these challenging monotypes - for sure!

Fiver Locker

Mother Nature is mad. She is angry. She has had it with us humans treating her like she’s a doormat. No more Ms Nice Guy. She is done trying to show us her beauty and splendour only for us to trample all over her pretty flowers and poison her water. She is going to burn us, drown us, flick us off her skin with storms. Enough is enough. I used oil sticks and printing ink to print directly from a Perspex plate, as well as working with stencils and the trace monotype technique to complete my images.

Georgina Berens

Trace monotype is a wonderful, free process and appeals to me as a “drawer”. You do not need a press to make a trace monotype and a print can be made by placing a piece of paper onto an inked piece of glass and pressing on the back with your finger or the back of a paintbrush to pick up the ink off the glass and onto the other side of the paper. I like how immediate it is, and how the lines are soft and fuzzy like crayon. I also like how the spots where you rest your hand pick up ink too. A reminder that print is not limited to the more technical and equipment-reliant mediums but that something as simple and direct as a handprint is also a print. We see the hand of the artist in this technique. My free Sticks and stones tree is therefore a once-off print, a bit like the daily sketchbook drawings I do each morning.

Sticks

Heidi Meikle

First Woman (2021) and The First Lady (2021) form part of my response to the theme Mother Nature in Monotype. For these works I was inspired by two reactions. One was my impression of Gustave Courbet’s painting The Origin of the World (1866). Its title appears to acknowledge the fundamental importance of the role of women in society, but the painting’s sharp cropping of the female genitalia still raises the troubling question of voyeurism. I found the title and the painting fascinating in relation to the TPG’s exhibition theme of Mother Nature in Monotype. My reaction to this painting was to add sea urchins to female genitalia. In doing so I have attempted to create an uncomfortable feeling for the viewer. The women subjects in First Woman and The First Lady both have their own power and agency, as neither is affected by the pain associated with sea urchins.

José Vermeij

This series on Mother Nature in Monotype started with my thoughts around the stress on the ecosystems and the shape that our earth is in now. It does not matter where we live in the world, we are all affected by climate change.

According to Greek mythology, Gaia was the first Greek Goddess to create herself out of primordial chaos. ‘From her fertile womb all life sprang, and unto Mother Earth all living things must return after their allotted span of life is over ’ . Let’s hold on to Mother Nature a bit longer!

My chosen Gel plate printing technique allowed for the use of natural material in monotype.

Kay Fourie

Nonnetjiesuil: I have never wondered why an owl is considered to be wise. Of course they are. They can turn their heads exactly 180 degrees around, they swoop about noiselessly and they keep to themselves without ever trying to focus attention upon themselves. Nobody knows where the owl lives, they leave no trace of their lodgings or of their movements. Consider us foolish humans who love any kind of attention, be it positive or negative, who build houses to be noticed by neighbours and even add glitz and glamour if we can afford it. My chosen technique for this image was gel plate monotype.

Sleepy cat: Who dares to bother a cat about to sleep? Cats have this beautiful, enviable joy of being in their bodies. If they stretch, it looks like sheer pleasure, when they curl up, I want to be inside that curl, when they relax into sleep, I am jealous. My chosen technique for this image is gel plate monotype, because it has a softness that can describe a cat perfectly.

KeabetsweMakhooane

I chose to interpret a bird that flew into our kitchen window on Sunday – I don’t think it was hurt badly as it quickly flew off before I reached it. It left an imprint on the window and I thought about how, in many cultures, birds are viewed as links to God, carriers of messages, and good omens. Mother Nature is always communicating with us, giving us instructions and lessons. These works serve to remind us that there is always much to do, much to reflect on.

Lengana

KelebogileMasilo

Mother Nature is a common personification of nature that focuses on the life-giving and nurturing aspects of nature. In my Mother Nature works, I've shown her as a mythical goddess adorned by the elements of nature. In the Flower Child print, just her arms are shown embracing a small child. Almost one in five children are more affected or stirred up by their environment and stand out in comparison to their peers. They are the kids who get more easily overwhelmed, alarmed, intense, sensitive, but find peace in a change of environment, in nature, and when they are not overly stimulated. This image is of a little girl comforted by nature and decorated by it as a way of keeping her safe.

For my Mother Nature and Flower Child monotype prints, I painted the figures and used stencils of leaves and embroidered cloth.

Kim Lee Loggenberg

Yoni (Sanskrit: ‘abode’, ‘source’, ‘womb’, or ‘vagina’) in Hinduism is the symbol of the goddess Shakti, the feminine generative power. Home of sexual desire, the beginnings of life, fertility, and the place of divine feminine power, the yoni encapsulates the spirit of Mother Nature. Resembling the fleshy insides of a fruit or the petals of a flower, she opens and expands to give birth to all things new and life giving.

Yoni I & Yoni II were made using watercolour monotype, a technique which allows me freedom and flow while maintaining the delicacy and softness needed to embody the characteristics of Mother Nature herself.

Korien Sander

It is in a mother’s nature to nurture. A mother’s nurturing takes many different forms depending on the age of her child. At my age, my mother’s nurturing mostly takes the form of numerous WhatsApp messages as well as her offering and cooking my favourite meals when she visits from out of town. And there have always been flowers.

Screenprinting is my printmaking technique of choice, and it also presents the potential to create a monotype.

Kristen McClarty

These pieces continue with my current body of work, focused on immersion in my space. Despite the beauty that I am privileged to witness every day, I find myself looking for another place and space, where I can be alone with nature around me. No sound that bears witness to man. Only the noises of the natural world. Birds going about their business, baboons barking in the distance, a small hidden hive of bees, given away by the workers commuting with pollens to replenish their queen and her subjects. Silence of the rocks. A place that is close, but nobody has seen, hidden behind a massif. There I find a fissure, and in that fissure, a granite rock the size of a car, fallen and wedged. Prevented from continuing in its path of destruction. A silent and unknown threat. And over this, stands three sisters, looking on and knowing and holding back the destruction. Nature is a feminine force, and she is to be respected.

Laurel Holmes Living in Kommetjie in the Western Cape, one is always exposed to, and acutely aware of, the weather and the natural surrounds. So, this is one of those exhibition themes that resonates easily and has been dominant in my works over the years. The monotype/monoprint printing technique is also fitting for this theme. Nothing is ever the same – walking an evening beach and then walking it in the morning always yields something different – new tide marks, fresh sand topographies, new deposits of kelp and shell. Monotype therefore is so appropriate – every print pulled will be a new, different one.

of

Caterpillar’s

Leonora Venter

These monotypes are based on trees photographed during weekly walks in the Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens over the last four years. Apart from my garden and the trees on the pavements in my neighbourhood, this has been my only real contact with Mother Nature since the start of the Lockdown. The waterfall, the resident pair of eagles, countless other birds, the myriad of forest paths, the river flowing through it all, and above all, the trees, have become like the familiar presence of old and dear friends - and yet the Gardens constantly provide new discoveries as the seasons change.

Walter’s Garden: Giant

Walter’s Garden: Lean on Me

Walter’s Garden: The Host

Lucy Stuart Clark - monotypes

The celebrated myth of Daphne is visually beautiful, but culturally tragic since even as a tree she is not safe. She has given up her life as she knew it for him.

For my monotypes, the beauty and tragedy of the myth led me to think about my maternal grandmother, Daphne Young. As a young woman, she married my grandfather when he was stationed in Cape Town during WW2, moving to England. She loved him very much, but it was not a happy marriage – he had a wandering eye and she missed South Africa.

Looking at old family albums for inspiration, I discovered this young, beautiful, vibrant woman - a woman full of aspirations, on the cusp of making a decision that would change the direction of her life.

Daphne

Lucy Stuart Clark - ceramics

Marbled from clay scraps, the earthy tones of my ceramics inspired a series of strange desert landscapes inhabited by watery blue and white explorers. Two Daphne-like figures emerged, standing on precarious surfaces while balancing whole worlds on their heads. These wobbly sculptures experimented not only with the compatibility of different clays, by also with pushing firing temperatures rather recklessly for clay colour at the expense of warping and cracking. Embracing these faults as part of the process, cracks became golden seams amongst fossils, warping added a fragility to the balancing act of my Daphnes.

Lyn van Greunen

Here I have portrayed Mother Nature as an African woman representing Strength, Power and Provision. Certainly a force to be reckoned with, she is resourceful, achieving much for her family against all odds.

For Women’s Day, I celebrate the strength of these women who inspire me so much - carrying firewood, water filled containers, bags of maize and fruit and other much needed items, on foot, while still tending to their little ones often strapped to their backs. The reference photos I used are my own, so I can tell you their story. The woman is crossing the Limpopo - with almost a tree balanced on her head. It’s the rainy season so the river was flowing fast. She waded across to the other side, never mind the crocodiles that could have been there, to provide fuel to cook her family’s food.

I inked up my monotype plates and then removed the ink to create the images, also adding stencils and leaves from the resilient Knob Thorn tree, Acacia Nigrescens. The threaded fabric symbolises the homemaker - without whom rural Africa as a whole would fall apart.

Madelize van der Merwe

Guild: ecology - a group of species that have similar requirements and play a similar role within a community.

The Blue Guild images depict relationships of organisms to one another (plants) and their physical surroundings and consider their protective role and importance within our social structure. They are the Blue Guild and have considerable power as they stand together. It’s a reminder of the nurturing role nature plays. Blue, the colour of sky and water, comes from above and below. Whether tranquil, peaceful, or unnerving, we are surrounded by blue in all its shades.

The monotype images were created in a painterly way, with lose mark-making, giving them a certain connectedness through the use of different shades of blue.

Mandie Immelman

Basic qualities associated with femininity, sexuality, and fertility caught my interest with this theme. I found these aspects to be encapsulated in the processes of layering and wiping away ink as well as the layering of symbols like lace, bees, and IUD’s. All bees are assigned their role at birth: the worker bees, always female, are never able to reproduce. Despite this, they serve an invaluable purpose in the hive. In a sense, this choicelessness translates into our own society. Since a major part of being feminine is equated with being fertile, I often find myself struggling with this conflation - with my ‘purpose without reproduction’ being questioned not only by family and doctors but also by strangers. The decision to choose autonomy over my own body and purpose goes against the hive, or against the purpose assigned to me at birth by my society.

Monoprint and the singularity of the process echo with the singularity of my existence without children. Not purposeless, just fleeting.

Mandy Conidaris

For many years I’ve been concerned about the destruction that humankind has been having on the natural environment. This concern has grown since the birth of my first grandchild 10 years ago. I often find myself thinking of these innocent beings and how they will inherit an ecology that has been compromised by their parents and grandparents – in part due to our ready acceptance of convenient products, including plastics, synthetic materials, aerosols, and toxic cleaning materials. How will they move forward? What state will the planet be in? Will the human species survive?

My thinking has been greatly influenced by the writings of Diarmuid O’Murchu (Quantum Theology, 2004) where he states: In the evolutionary story – ours and that of Planet Earth – the planet always wins out. Mother Earth has an amazing resilience, a very profound intelligence, and can be quite ruthless in maintaining her own integrity. … Gaia is not purposefully antihuman, but so long as we continue to change the global environment against her preferences, we encourage our replacement with a more environmentally benevolent species.

Marelise van Wyk

In this series of works I am reacting to Mother Nature in relation to how we currently study her. We are aware of the stresses that are put upon her environment because of human interference, and constantly measure her state, consider how long she will still last, how far can we push/use her until we’ve gone too far...? The result here is a series of gel prints using organic matter, altered by human interference.

Mariette Momberg

My work is influenced by womxn’s empowerment and socio-political justice. I’m passionate about the environment and feel that creatives should make a conscious effort to minimise their environmental impact through maintaining environmentally considerate studios. This body of work, consisting of low-toxic, water-based monotypes, aims to highlight the environmental emergency currently facing humanity. Single-use plastics and global warming present the most pressing concerns. Repurposed plastic waste collected from the beach and home were used to create these works. Average sea levels around the globe are predicted to rise by at least 6 to 9 metres over the next few millennia and would result in the complete submergence of many major cities around the world. Traces of plastic particles have polluted our entire planet from Artic snow to the deepest oceans. Humanity needs to act urgently to protect the earth for future generations.

Sea level rise

monotype

Megan Shipman

This work is a simple monotype study which explores texture, colour, and the freeing, once-off nature of such a print-making technique.

The birds could be seen as a symbol of liberation as well as of the notion that they cannot be ‘captured’ again in the same moment.

Bird’s of a feather

Natasha Norman

So much occurs beyond our range of human vision. Like fetal ultrasounds, these works are an imaging system that seek to chart an immersion in natural cycles of creation and decay: generative episodes, moments of rationality and what science calls entropy.

Disorientation is fertile ground for new ways of being. I am interested in a disorientation that is also comforting. A submission to something primordial, natural, and nurturing. Mysterious in that it defies all forms of conventional human logic.

Comprehension

Succession

Neeske Alexander

"Sometimes you just have to go dancing naked in the forest - whether physically or metaphorically. It is then that you are truly and completely free"

Nellien Brewer

Mother Nature has many faces – death vs life, beauty vs cruelty, fragility vs resilience. The images I have chosen for the Mother Nature in Monotype exhibition explore the beauty found in the cycle of life and death.

The flower image is a watercolour monotype showing a Stapelia sp, or Carrion flower. The resilience of the Carrion flower is remarkable, and it survives in extremely harsh environments. Its flowers are beautiful, but its scent mimics the smell of dead meat in order to attract pollinating flies and ants.

The two dead birds were found on walks in our neighbourhood - a Robin and an Olive Thrush. The birds were created by subtractive monotype. Many bird species have happily adapted to living alongside humans in urban environments. Unfortunately, all too often this co-habitation leads to disaster …

Watercolour monotype

Nicolette Geldenhuys

After this year of not having the freedom to experience Nature, I am embracing artistic expression by taking elements from my immediate natural environment and elevating them to a ’mystical landscape’ where positive nostalgia (a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past), healing, joy, and freedom is available. I hope the viewer is left with a sense of belonging in a world where, especially during the pandemic, loneliness is so prevalent. For the Mother Nature in Monotype exhibition, I relooked at the ’mystical landscape’ idea, wanting to use elements that I scavenged - specifically seagrass and kelp, so abundant here where I live in Kommetjie - and use them as templates to create the landscape. In some they appear as trees and in others underwater foliage. When the female figure found her way into the prints, I wanted to portray her in a state of liberty and oneness with her surroundings. My theme pivots around the experience of renewal, awakening, freedom and the peace that being in Nature provokes in us as humans.

Roxy Kaczmarek

These works focus on the sensibilities and relationship between us and the natural world. Through loose brush strokes inspired by nature’s stillness and movement, I explore the separation and closeness we humans have created. The moon, a symbol of the divine feminine, softly lights the valley of my parents’ home. The moon catches shadows and lights rocks like beacons. Deeper into the forest, cool and dark, everything seems still, yet movement is constant as creatures and nature continue to dance.

Dancing

Sanmarie Harms

Reproduction and rejuvenation has been my inspiration for the theme of Mother Nature. My work centres around the concepts of life as opposed to death, and chaos as opposed to order. The circle of life - that death that brings forth new life, and that all life ends in death – reveals a cycle of reproduction and rejuvenation into new forms of being.

Oceanic Crust resembles a germinating core with a perishing crust. Dead layers are peeled off as an interior life develops and expands into new beings. Cosmic Slice shows how a specimen cut away from a whole can appear visually senseless and abstract, so here I represent nature viewed from both afar and microscopically, to imply the way our lives can seem chaotic when we lose perspective. The source for the two Chaos prints were inspired by photographs that I took – close-ups of rock formation surfaces – due to my fascination with the way time forms layers.

Cosmic Slice

Oceanic Crust

Textured

Sarah Judge

Mother Nature is felt and experienced by people in more than one way - I’ve been fascinated at how nature seems to take over, protect or even hide buildings when they have been abandoned or left with little to no human interaction. There are many spaces around our city like this and when thinking of Mother Nature, I think of how a mother protects its own, and if a child is abandoned, there are many times that a new mother comes into the picture to look after it or protect it. I like to think of abandoned spaces being protected, hidden, taken in/over by the nature around it, like a mother and her child. I chose to make a watercolour monotype for In Her Arms because of how soft, but how strong it can be. There are many ways you can manipulate the paint and water-soluble crayons to create a sense of depth.

Theona Truter

All fruit and vegetables come from nature. Mother Nature sustains us. Being a mother the whole process of nurturing revolves around feeding your family.

“As she chopped herbs and sliced asparagus and poured boiling water…, she kept thinking…. All she wanted to do was make them full of her love, her food…”. (A Kitchen Allegory by MFK Fisher).

I wanted to portray the caring nature of woman and the abundance of Mother Nature by showing female hands bringing in the harvest for all to feast on.

Apricot Peaches

Abundance

Xia Cweba (Johannesburg)

My art practice is an ongoing cross-examination of stereotypical ideology around black womanhood through cultural and traditional viewpoints intertwined with the gaze of harsh critical western standards. Within these works, I play on a duality of identity, the ability to fit in a traditional African narrative. This work in particular is about a spiritual journey and finding oneself.

Buhlebandalo

The end!