Olive Thrush #1

Out in the Open

On a walk one day, I picked up a dead sparrow. Even though it was dead, it was so exquisitely beautiful, that I simply had to immortalise it in some way. I drew its portrait in charcoal. Then I found a dead pigeon, and Mimi van der Merwe brought me a dead robin she had found in her garden. Other people started bringing me little bird corpses as they became aware of my interest. I started working on a series of ‘dead bird’ works in a variety of media. For me, the little corpses became a symbol of the many beautiful and precious things in our country that have been destroyed during the recent years.

Crime, corruption, xenophobic attacks, unscrupulous politicians… my country (Pretoria, South Africa) is going through very difficult times. Our family farms have been lost in an (unjustified) land claim. My brother has moved to the USA and my children are talking about emigrating. The once beautiful ‘plattelandse dorpies’ lie derelict and forlorn.

Sometimes it is difficult to see anything positive in the doom and gloom. But then I was reminded of Job. Job went through such terrible experiences, and yet he never sinned or cursed God, not even when his own wife told him to ‘curse God and die’. In the end everything he had lost was restored to him.

I do believe there is hope.