LATITUDES ART FAIR

Latitudes Art Fair

Karin Daymond and Hermann Niebuhr

Please join us this May, from the 24th to 26th.
Find us in the Centre Court at B4.

We hope to see you there!

Karin Daymond’s work is strongly rooted in the South African landscape. 

“Although a work starts from a geographical point, it quickly becomes my inner space. I live within this space even during more mundane activities. I become involved with the possibilities of paint and design; how they can be used to describe an environment, but also how the marks, textures, patterns can capture the energy and rhythm of both the external and internal landscapes that I associate with a place”.

She speaks of landscapes as having an emotional identity, for instance the vegetation in the Karoo is restrained and cautious, while the natural growth in the Lowveld of Mpumalanga is flamboyant. Intensive mark-making, patterning and colour create a world within a world. “Sometimes a landscape enhances my sense of self and how I belong, and sometimes it’s the other way around”. The exploration of belonging is central to much of her work, recently explored in the context of migrancy and refugeedom.

Daymond works from her studio in Mpumalanga, a province known for its sub-tropical beauty. She committed to her full–time art practice in 2008, following many years of teaching. Her primary medium is large-scale oil painting. Drawing and printmaking, particularly lithography, form an integral part of her work.

Daymond based in Nelspruit, Mpumalanga, was born in 1967 in Durban, South Africa and has a BA Fine Art from The University of KwaZulu-Natal. Her work is included in many public and private collections, both in South Africa and internationally. Amongst these are the UNISA collection and the University of the North-West.  

Statement – A sense of playfulness has crept into my recent landscapes, imagining what places would be like without human interference. Of course, my presence alone is a form of interference. Still, I am driven to try to capture the spirit of the place. I feel it through my painter’s eyes; it is in rhythm and patterns, light and dark, warmth and coolness, the way the light changes our perception of an environment. In this recent work particularly, it is the way shapes and marks seem to organise themselves as they become further away from us. A landscape belies an underlying awareness of both our significance and our insignificance in this world.

Hermann Niebuhr was born in Johannesburg in 1972. He studied at Rhodes University and graduated with a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts (with distinction in Art History) in 1993. He was awarded the Rhodes Master’s Degree scholarship and the Raymond Mullen prize for Painting.

Niebuhr is a trained landscape painter. His work combines both the landscape as geographical document often with a deeper subliminal track charting an emotional map of the scene. As a long-time student of Kashmir Shaivism, his work deals with spiritual matters- seeking to discover that which lies beneath the surface.

His cityscapes of the early 2000’s drew critical acclaim (particularly his Johannesburg works) and established him as a voice in the city. Laurice Taitz in the Sunday Times described his work this way, ” The paintings depict a momentary suspension of the noise, the people, and the drama. The moods of the city are on display, the gold-tinted sunsets, the broody rain-filled afternoons, the quietness of dusk and the stirring of night.”

Ricky Burnett (teacher, write, curator and painter) has said of Niebuhr’s work, “We may see and describe Hermann’s works as landscapes, and looking at his work we may go a little further and not merely see the paintings as landscapes but, more excitingly, we may see the landscape as painting.”

Pascale Ascher says “When Hermann paints, he does so with recognition – a practice that involves noticing and making conscious what is Real. He recognises the natural world speaking to us – giving imperatives that are life-giving, spirit-raising, soul-uplifting. An invitation to something Remarkable is there if we are open to it. And Hermann is. He acts as a conduit through his painting, passing on directives that call us to our highest selves.”

In 2020 Niebuhr left his longtime Fordsburg studio in Johannesburg for the village of De Rust where he lives and works as a full-time artist and part time mystic.

Statement – The Night Garden

The Night Garden is a collection of paintings that have occupied me for the last year. They were born out of the electricity cuts in the country which had me going into the garden at night, to explore what would be revealed during the times of total darkness. Armed with a torch and a camera I set about looking for the treasures which were waiting to be revealed. An analogy to the mystic path of uncovering the treasure within is at play. As selective light plays onto the plant/flower and the viewer witnesses it, so it’s mysterious, magical true nature is revealed. The paintings produced in the studio are an equivalent of this experience. These are not mere botanical studies but rather alchemical formulas revealing the mystery that lies hidden by day, until seen in the purity of night. These paintings hold a charge, they reveal something of the natural world which is ‘hidden in plain sight’.