Mielie Fields

This work was part of a body of work titled "Fields"

Fields Statement:

I spent my formative years growing up on a sugarcane estate called Tambankulu, in Swaziland. The population was tiny with only a handful of neighbouring houses. Since relocating to Durban when I was eight, I have never been back baring one very hasty drive through a few years ago. These years on the farm are my most vivid and treasured memories, they have become the inspiration for this body of work.

Living on a sugar cane estate meant we were constantly surrounded by seas of green. Step out in the front garden and watch the wind sweep through and turn the crops into graceful dancers with perfect timing and choreography. Drive to school or the shops and the walls of flanking soldiers of cane standing at attention tower over you. Running through and picking the cotton balls of the little dried-up bushes. And getting mesmerized by the perfect patterns and precision of the rows and rows of the mono crop. Big expanses of green as far as you can see, moving with the earths landscape, is so entangled in my day-to-day memory of childhood that it’s impossible to separate.

This work is my attempt to recreate the feeling of these memories. Focussing in on the movement and pattern, the colour shifts and overwhelming yet incredibly calming ocean of green. Through colour, texture, and pattern, I encourage the viewer to draw on their experience of seeing large monocrops, hear the rustling of the leaves, smell the earthy cent and watch the work dance and move before you.