NAMDEB Artists Retreat 2022 - Bakers Bay

“Baker’s Bay is an extremely remote abandoned mining outpost in the restricted diamond mining area formerly known as the Sperrgebiet and now part of the Tsau//Khaeb National Park. It was established as a sampling operation, the infrastructure was of a permanent nature. The area was inhabited from 1979 to 1990. Sampling focused on deflation areas, which refer to windblown diamond deposits in the valleys where the wind rushed through at 50 km/h!” 

And it still does! 

I joined a group of Namibian visual artists in Bakers Bay, Namibia, for an 11 Day artist retreat/workshop in October 2022. After a 2 Day introduction to the geology and geography of the area surrounding the bay, we had 8 days in which to make work inspired by the wind, the sand, and the rock islands held captive in the cold, cold seas just offshore. Black-backed jackals slipped between the remnants of the semi-derelict buildings left over from mining days, in which we ate, worked, and slept. A Brown hyena wandered back and forth along the beach each day, ignoring us as she passed. At sunrise each morning we walked out to the Cape fur seal colony at the far end of the bay. One day we found a rare visitor from the Antarctic, a Leopard seal, washed up in the midst of the colony. She lay for a week, exhausted, huge, and spotted among the smaller Cape fur seals, before recovering from her inertia. Then she slipped back into the ocean, disappearing into a return as mysterious as her arrival. Jackass penguins, cormorants, and terns wheeled through sea and sand-blown sky, carried by the strength of the currents, the tides, and the winds. A full moon pulled the Spring tide, almost to the foothills of the rock and sand dunes surrounding the bay. In the rinse, we found seal jaw bone, seal skull, seal rib, seal shoulder blade, seal fur, and seal tooth, evidence of murder by Jackal and Hyena. I collected pieces of bone, tooth, and stone to work with, on the single painting I made each day, a record of my short time in the bay. During the course of the 8 days, while waiting for the paint to dry, I filled a tiny notebook with paintings of Ventrifact, Banded iron stone, Zeolite, Orange River agate, Chalcedony, Episodite, Makwassie porphyry, Karoo baked shale, Pearson Banthom dark green. I made a list of every bird we twitched on our dawn walks, Familiar chat, Kitlitz plover, Kelp gull, Pied crow, Oystercatcher, Jackass penguin, Hartlaub’s gull, Damara tern, Alpine Swift, Bank Cormorant, Common tern, Sanderling, Cape wagtail, Traktrak chat, Curlew and Sandpiper. 

Bakers Bay

All paintings in water colour on cotton rag, size: 120x40cm

BAKERS BAY STONES – 2x2 inch leather bound book of painted pebbles

All at Sea

What emerges from hours spent in the studio, floating earth in water upon paper. An idea will develop from a conversation, a request, a piece of music, or an image found and then lost. Here is the SEA, bodies of water that separate and connect. How do the continents float on these vast bodies of water in the same way that the ochres float in the pools of water I spread across paper. Each color dissolves in a different way, fanning, grainy or soft. Islands and continents appear and disappear throughout the drying process and the results are driven by intuition guided by chance.

All works are 160cm x 120cm in size. Botswana ochre watercolour on Arches 400 gsm.

All works are 40cm x 30cm in size. Botswana ochre watercolour on Cotton Rag.