Meet Me at the Mantis Mall

There is something about Darling! If you enter the little town and see the quite drab main road running through, you will realise that all Darling's treasures will have to be hunted down. It will be worth it! In many of the restored Victorian cottages with their olde English gardens a guest house, restaurant or business can be found, and I am going to paint you many little vignettes

Nr 12 Long Street houses an art gallery where my paintings are sold. It is cheekily named The Darling Art Supermarket, although it consists of one large room (and no trolleys). This is part of the spunk I enjoy about Darling. So when a friend said to me:"Meet me at the Mantis Mall", I was surprised for a few seconds, and then of course, I knew what she referred to and played along. So let me introduce you:

The Mantis Trading Store was established in a cottage a few years ago. It sold quilts, pottery and antiques. Then a veranda and a part of the garden was hired out to a nursery with a happy selection of indigenous plants. Last year another tenant found space to run a coffee house, and woe and behold, the town's bookshop also moved over. So, who says it is not a mall? This painting takes the viewer into a roomful of antique furniture, porcelain and mirrored old books in the smallest 'mall' in the country!

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O, Look! There is the Mountain!

Table Mountain is truly visible from almost anywhere in the Cape and its surroundings. On the West Coast, where it is flat, you can be in a friend's house, a restaurant or even my own studio and see a bit of it. You can drive from Malmesbury, Mamre or Melkbosstrand and there will suddenly be a breathtaking view of it. But we never tire of this marvel and will always exclaim: O look! There is the Mountain!

I am painting the main house at Bokbaai, a National Monument, and will post it soon. But I am first taking you around the back to the land end of the property. Climbing the slope behind the house, I saw a West Coast chimney and walked towards it. There I noticed a brave little corrugated iron canopy over the back door, with little chance of protecting the entrance against heavy rain (remember, I live close by and have first-hand experience of the winter rains here). The fields on the incline were greenish and it seemed as if the first rain had already brought forth a few clumps of flowers.

And suddenly the clouds lifted somewhat and there it was: that blue mountain of hope. To give Table Mountain a look of gentle purity in my painting, I spread a blue-grey, almost denim colour thickly. Into that wet colour I dropped layer upon layer of white paint until a soft fuzziness developed. This very plain picture is the result.

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