Back in Hackney this week, where the mercury dipped below zero this morning and the windows are streaked with fat droplets of condensation as they slide down the panes.
This was painted somewhere in the Karoo outside Laingsburg. Wonderfully hot and dry and vast and ancient, those scenes unfolding along the road.
It all seems more than a million miles away, though I painted this last Wednesday. In the car, heading home after a trip to the Baviaanskloof and little Karoo via the Breede River.
Oh, places of my heart.
These were made on the road back from the Kalahari in South Africa, done in the car on the long, beautiful road between Brandvlei and Calvinia on the R27. I've always wondered how it would be to paint those huge landscapes, at least now I have made a start. Such a great way to really see, to notice more of the changing colours and forms and textures of the countryside. The textures out there are something special - the small, dry karoo bushes, the ironstone koppies, the smoothness of mountain ranges far, far in the distance and the fenceposts marching forever towards the horizon. I'm a fan.
