It is important to read the context
Spoonbills and electricity bills (Ref: CH 07)
Title: “The miserable Flapping of clean energy”
More pros than cons, although it does pose a danger especially to some large species, but it made for a striking composition. Positioning is important, but sometimes conservationist arguing is as blatantly political as industry’s. For every 1 bird turbines kill, our social media communication towers kill 37,fossil fuel power plants 76, and domestic cats 7800.
There are new bladeless designs based on vorticity principles
Owl in cityscape ruins (Ref: CH 29)
Title: “Pleadeth the Owl, Nevermore” aka “Road to Damascus”
On the war in Syria.-who calls the shots/airstrikes, who holds the Aces, the east or the West. Play on Apple/IPhone personal assistant Siri-who loves a good countdown. Steve Job’s father was an Syrian immigrant to USA
"...yesterday, the bird of night did sit Even at noonday, upon the market place, Calling and shrieking" (from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar")
Yellow Ladder (Ref: CH16)
Title: “Is something eluding you Sunshine?”
On a friend’s teenage daughter’s issues, I am sunshine, she is the hawk in the picture. Anyone who isn’t confused doesn’t really understand the situation. We all desire to be understood, but nobody enjoys being obvious. “Nothing worse could happen to one than to be completely understood” -Carl Jung.
It is also not unusual for teenagers to be mad at their parents
Blue sky owl (Ref: CH 17)
Title: “A satellite has no conscience”
There is more multi than choice in Multichoice
Hangar, owl and giraffe (Ref:CH02)
Title: “Hangar 2”
on my Hoedspruit melancholy blues and the fat Spanish Contessa
Hornbill Cacophony (Ref: CH 38)
Title: “@ S26°02’22.03” E28°03’46.16”
On VBS scandal.
Landscape with hawk and building (Ref: CH 30)
Title: “Free State Dairy Farm”
“All cows are milked, but some cows are more milked than others”
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others-the proclamation by the pigs who control the government in the novel Animal Farm by George Orwell, a comment on the hypocrisy of governments that proclaim absolute equality of their citizens but give power and privileges to a small elite.
On Estina project, The Hawks and aircraft hangar/ farm shed
Four birds Violet (Ref: CH 36)
Title: “Delta Dialogue”
Old friends meet annually-nothing changes much.
Loerie’s are just grumpy. B830 was the first ever swallow ringed in the British Isles, and later recovered in South Africa. Bee eaters have a beautiful clear voice, and lilac breasted rollers roll.
Different propelling efficiencies for different flight patterns. Different strokes for different folks.
( People try nonviolence for a week, and when it doesn’t work, they go back to violence, which hasn’t worked for centuries) Central Africa is a dangerous part of the journey
Monolith (Ref: CH01)
Title: “@ S33°58’ E18°51”
Monolithic, maybe a post(office) apocalyptic
The fish eagle and wall (Ref: CH 32)
Title: “WTF?!”
Weee-ah, hyo-hyo, heee-ah, heeah-heeah - The cry/voice of the fish eagle as described in most birding publications.
Cry4: a protein found in birds’ eyes responsible for their ability to orient themselves by detecting magnetic fields – a very recent discovery.
Is Habitat loss a similar issue to Land reform and lines ‘locals’ did not draw?
Written on canvas: weee-ah, hyo-hyo or a heee-ah, heeah-heeah. ‘help!’ – the fish eagle’s Cry4 ran out. When we lose our way, or encounter unexpected obstacles en route, or in finding out something which we wish to know, there are two possible courses to take. It may be that the right course is to treat the obstacle as a spur to further efforts; but there is a second possibility - that we have been trying to find something which does not exist. We have been concerned with the borderlines of the material and spiritual worlds as approached from the side of the former. But further we must penetrate into the recesses of the human mind. A coal strike or an air strike, a great war or a great wall, may directly change the conditions of the atmosphere and political climate; a lighted match idly thrown away may cause deforestation which will change the rainfall and natural climate. There can be no fully deterministic control of inorganic phenomena unless the determinism governs mind itself. Conversely if we wish to emancipate mind we must to some extent emancipate the material world also. In only one respect do the eagle treat its binocular observer as more than a piece of registering apparatus; It assumes that he is subject to a common failing of human nature, viz. he takes it for granted that it was his patch of land that God chiefly had in mind when the universe was created. Hence he is (like my viewer perhaps?) disinclined to take seriously the views of location of any living creature on the other side.
Fish eagle vertical (Ref: CH 35)
Title: “yearning”
Crude maybe, but meant to shock, and it is after all how birds do it.
Morality, not economics, should be the basis for conservation
Goshawk in frame vertical (Ref: CH 31)
Title: برواز دبي @N 25 °14’08.02 E 55° 18’01.28”
“and summoned now to face your invincible disgrace”
Hawking for Msholozi
The frame pattern- new frame building in Dubai. Life becomes easier when you learn to accept an apology you never got.
Fish (Ref: CH 19)
Title: “The seven seas of rue”
On plastic in the ocean. The Queen song title ‘seven seas of Rhye’ -Rhye meaning God, Rue-bitterly regret. “Sustainable fishing” -a marketing term that means ‘business as usual’
Rubbish dump/Landfill (Ref: CH 26)
Title: “Free-associating with garbage”
‘free association is a method sometimes used in psychoanalysis where subjects are encouraged to let their thoughts wander, the final chain of associations often provide clues to underlying disturbances. Ideas, words or images suggests other ideas in a non-logical chain reaction.
These thoughts came up unfortunately -we sustain ourselves by transforming nature to garbage.
Skimmer birds blues (Ref: CH 39)
Lines crossed/flight paths
“You skim the mighty river
on a path designed by gods,
but the river’s fake with plastics
You might not beat the odds.”
There is plastic now, even in the Okavango Delta!
Pinkish (Ref: CH 04)
Title: “Hangar 4”
The Baobab still stands, mainly because the Chinese only want Hardwood species, and it does not make good charcoal.
Goshawk and Graffiti (Ref: CH 34)
Title: “@S 28 °54’ E 17° 59’
The irony is I don’t think it bothers the hawk that much
Forest (Ref: CH 37)
Title: ‘The Tree’s silent prayer”
Our Planter who art in heaven Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom stun, By your wayward son,
On an earth that is a-heavin. Give us this day our daily spread, And forgive us our invasions
As we forgive those noxious gasses, And lead us not into mutation, And deliver us from upheaval.
For thine is the kingdom, And the flower and the glory, For ever and ever, Amen
Only when the last tree has been cut down,
Only when the last river has been poisoned,
Only when the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.
-Cree Indian Prophecy
“Only when the last tree has been cut down and the last river has dried up will man realise that reciting red Indian proverbs makes you sound like a fucking muppet.”
― Banksy
Empty Frame (Ref: CH 42)
Title: “Frame, frame, on the easel, who is Mzansi’s biggest weasel?” AKA: “Dikkop en Diknek is dikbek”
Etymology
From Afrikaans dikkop, from dik (“thick”) + kop (“head”).
Noun
dikkop (plural dikkops)
1. (South Africa) A bird of the family Burhinidae.
From Afrikaans diknek, from dik (“thick”) + nek (“neck”)
Diknek (plural diknekke)
1. (South Africa) Stereotypical male, aggressive; cheeky
From Afrikaans dikbek, from dik ( “thick” ) + bek ( “mouth”)
Adjective
1. (South African) a sour-faced or sulky person. ...
Secretary bird and painting (Ref: CH 40)
Title: “@S 33 °56’ 31.51” E 18° 50’ 52.06”Steinhoff HQ
Steinhoff saga; We live in litigious times – just social comment and not necessarily my opinion.
“die perde hol en die gelde rol
en die girls is goed getan,
Die wed is aan en goud die kraan
Die wennerskring jou wentelbaan
Maar uit die bloute optelfoute
Wiese skuld was dit?
Jou tyd breek aan
Die Gulfstream staan
Gedagvaar om te hoes”
Sacred Ibis, colours of the SA flag
Title: @ State of the Nation”
Too early for the dove, perhaps too late for the rainbow?
Four Panels (Ref: CH 22)
Title: “everybody knows”
But we remain silent-like the perch of the parrot. 750 African grey parrots found dead on Durban flight from DRC!- and those who do not understand silence will probably not understand words.
Blue sky red doors Owl (Ref: CH 21)
Title: “Boniface’s secret warehouse in Dar es Salaam”
Tanzania’s most notorious poacher.
If the rhino is to be saved at all, it won’t be saved by old minds with new programs, but by new minds with no programs.
The courtroom gathering (Ref: CH 14)
Title: Twitterati@S25°44’40.16 E 28°11’14.83
On the Oscar Pistorius case. The day Twitter came to life in SA. Written very small around the painting, some of the tweets on the case.
I now desire to convey significances which cannot be told by completely natural scenery.
It is that undiscovered country that lies between. Here and there a plunge into desolation, but followed often by a delightful excursion.
The frank realization that nature is in a world of sorrows is significant. I do not mean that as an artist I am preoccupied with the philosophical implications of this. From my artistic point of view it is not so much a withdrawal from the purely natural scene as an assertion of freedom for autonomous development (Kantian). I am not insisting on the symbolic character of the work because of its bearing on philosophy, but because the aloofness from familiar conceptions will be apparent in the scenes I depict.
Accept change as inevitable. If you are not prepared for this you are likely to be out of sympathy with the work.
The path I have taken I must pursue for its own sake, irrespective of the views it may afford of a wider landscape, in this spirit I must follow the path whether it leads to the hill of vision or the tunnel of obscurity.