As a child, and faced with the absence of a book in my hands, one of my favourite ways to while away the time was to observe walls and decaying layers of paint. The crumbling walls beneath the paint also offered additional intrigue as regards colours and patterns. Most of the time, the colours were varying shades of grey and yellow. As I started working on this painting, I was also reminded of the beautiful times spent with my grandmother – a truly unique woman who was caring, loving and possessed the ability to view the world with the same wonder of as that of a child. No detail was insignificant for her. One of my earliest memories is that of spending afternoons on the roof with my grandmother, looking at the freesias and the bumblebees.
This painting bears no resemblance to the location. It replicates colours from my memories in the 1980s and brings out the simplicity of life at that time, where people and narrow streets in the heart of the village were an unquestionable part of our identity. When it was still possible to pause and observe, so that, in my case, three decades later, I can conjure colours and people in my mind to paint their memory as a feeling.
