The Mountain

Before I knew what art was, I knew silence.

 

I grew up in the small mountain village of Kaapschehoop in South Africa. My happiest memories are not of toys or possessions, but of wandering alone through misty forests, climbing moss-covered rocks, riding my bicycle along dirt roads, and returning home with wet grass brushing against my legs in the early morning.

When I entered the forest, there was a kind of quiet that has never left me. It wasn’t simply the absence of sound. It was a feeling of belonging—to the earth, to the trees, to time itself.

Many years and many countries later, I still find myself returning to that feeling.

My vessels, sculptures that hold light, paintings, and the forms I build by hand are not landscapes. They are a state of being made visible. They are the quiet I carry within me, given form by hand. 

They are the shape that memory takes in my hands.