Black birds on the wire

I shared a perfect studio with my sister, Claire, in the Bo-Kaap in Cape Town. A beautiful space it was, to go each day to paint and be with my sister. Triple volume walls and a bank of windows framed Lions head, we were opposite the Mosque and would hear the Imams call to prayer each and every day. Telephone poles stood like bedraggled soldiers along the cobbled streets and pidgeons blotted the lines in the early morning hours. The emotions evoked by the birds on the wires were always  of nostalgia and melancholia, and pulled me into the day to follow.

But the wires are going underground and our children shall never remember or know them and I was so saddened by this that I did a series of paintings that I exhibited in 2008.