I am a South African artist. Moving through places, observing, reflecting, are all part of my process, but most essential to the act of painting is reaching within and integrating the physical work I do with something deeper, drawing intuitively on my whole self while making. 

My first work grew out of phenomenological observation, exploring through the transformational work of painting, emotions and memories that were essentially personal, about family death, divorce, and what at the time felt like the loss of family through immigration. Many of these earlier works (2010 to 2015) are seascapes. In "The Blue of Distance"  Rebecca Solnit writes about the blue of distant peninsulas, "of anything far away": "The colour of that distance is the colour of an emotion, the colour of solitude and desire, the colour of there seen from here, the colour of where you are not. And the colour of where you can never go." When I first read this, I understood what so many of my early paintings - literally of a southern peninsula - had been about.

Beginning a new phase of work, years later, in about 2022, I had to find a new way to relate to my work, since so much about and around me had changed. My creative process now includes trying to understand the painful colonial history we have inherited. No longer drenched in the blue of longing I found myself, on my daily dog walks, drawn to the small river near me, that runs less than ten kilometres in its path from source to sea. It is the Disa River in Hout Bay, where settlers first started logging out the abundant forests in around 1650. There is a sense of hubris about the river, which is eroded by flood, polluted in parts - but at the same time it is a vital, beautiful thing, full of life. 

I have had several solo exhibitions (‘Stay’ at Commune.1, Cape Town 2015, ‘Entangled’ at Commune.1, Cape Town 2013, ‘There but not there’ at AVA, Cape Town 2011 and ‘Flow’ at AVA, Cape Town 2010.) I also work as a writing mentor for emerging black novelists through the Jakes Gerwel Foundation's Bosberg Book Writing project, and as a freelance writer (communications and education). Here is a link to some of my writing about making meaning through history, books and art: https://angelabriggs.substack.com/ . I have a BA in English and History from UCT, and have over 30 years of experience of working in publishing. Between 2017 and 2022 much of my creative time and energy went into helping my partner build the house we live in, a carefully considered “green” house, demonstrating sustainable design and building techniques – touching the earth lightly .