:: Melkhoutfontein, Stilbaai, Western Cape, South Africa::
:: February & March 2016 - March & April 2017 - February & March 2018 ::
:: 2018 - 7.8m x 2m (approx) - Emulsion on Side Elevation ::
:: Eleanor & Family's House, Melkhoutfontein, Western Cape, South Africa ::
One of the truest purposes of an artist is to lay out the structures and foundations of a new world, and make it explicable to the people. Three years ago, when I first started thinking about mural designs for Melkhoutfontein, I dreamed up the Swift People - images from the local Bushman rock art of people transforming into swifts - as a symbol of transformation for the community. And in the past three years, the people of Melkhoutfontein have picked this up and run with it: they've truly understood, and there are Swift People painted all over the town now. If I can truly call myself an artist who aims to create and structure new worlds of wellness and wholeness for people, then it is really here in Melkhoutfontein that I have earned that name. I continue to be so honoured that my Swift People symbol has been taken so much into the hearts of the great people of Melkhoutfontein…
Here, then, is a circling of swifts in the sky over a scene which will be realised by Diane Rossouw and other local artists from Stilbaai. It will narrate the painful time when the people of Melkhoutfontein were forced inland by the Apartheid government and away from their ancestral land by the coast at Stilbaai. This was a time of great sorrow, and so the swifts flying with the people to their new home is intended as a kind of solace. I will update this page when the mural has been completed.
