News from the Art Gallery: Arabella Caccia - a 10m long painting will be on view at the Gallery from the 07th February 2015. Arabella was born in London and grew up in Tuscany before moving to Johannesburg where she spent her teenage years. She then went to Edinburgh University after which she lived and studied in Florence, London and New York. She returned to South Africa in 1990 and now lives and works in Cape Town. Arabella draws inspiration from the people, places and objects she loves. From the light where she lives and the wilderness where she goes to find peace and silence. The feeling of quiet and perhaps stillness in the work reflects the ambience she creates around her, in order to find inspiration and access her creativity. THE WOOD – 10 m long painting To step into a wood is to step into a world of enchantment. We are watchful and alert and our senses are sharpened to an aliveness of others beside ourselves. NOTES: In 2014 I began a body of work inspired by the Baobab tree, the African Tree of life. Metaphorically trees represent the communion between two worlds, they endure, they regrow and they bear fruit. I spent time in Botswana amongst these ancient, knowing trees whose sap flows according to the cycle of the moon and in whose branches nest moths and squirrels, bats and beetles. They creak and seem to talk in the wind, they have been shrines and temples, shelters and seen as gods of the plains. These trees lead me on, into a forest of 800 year old milk wood trees. I spent a week drawing and listening to the trees in the woods, where shadows and light beams dance with tendrils and twisted ropes, and mossy beards dangle from outstretched limbs. Between silences, birds call to each other, sometimes warning, sometimes crying sad longing calls and sometimes singing melodies of love. A wood is a place of magic where we are transformed, we go into the wood to grow and to find our souls by first losing ourselves. Fairy tales take us to the woods, they are a place where clandestine meetings happen, where lovers find each other, where gremlins and brigands hide, where sacrificial rights are performed, they are a place of dark secrets and hidden truths. It is here that we experience life at its most visceral. The forest is the guardian of our feral childhood nature. This is the forest that I have painted and inhabited, it has a winding path that takes us through the subconscious, where we encounter the shadow side of our nature. It is interesting that, in parallel with the literal deforestation of our landscape, and the replacing of the wild indigenous forests with sterile developments, urban jungles and sprawling shantytowns, mass single crop farming, erosion and the culling of the biodiversity of earth’s ecosystems, we have in psychic terms, experienced the loss of myth and mystery, and an across the board lateralization of mythology and religious texts, resulting in the absence of ritual and ceremony in all areas but that of romantic love. This has led to the creation of sterile imaginations, a paucity of fantasy, rising depression, and mental illness. Scientific and medical solutions have often lead to the purely symptomatic treatment of illnesses, ignoring the interdependence of the whole, of nature and of life. This is coupled with the rise of and the success of the personality of the psychopath, a violent and emotionally disconnected, self-serving and addictive society, seeking instant gratification and comfort above all. Perhaps the call for the preservation of indigenous forests and the wildernesses that do still exist, the call for the protection of the biodiversity of the fauna and flora of our planet and the longing for being wilderness experienced by some, is a mirror to a similar psychic longing for, acceptance of and return, of metaphor, myth, mystery, ritual and magic which will allow for the growth of a healthy human psyche. For more info: arabellacaccia #arabellacaccia #art #Franschhoek
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 09:35:52 +0000
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