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TRANSCENDENCE Amy Ayanda, by Dan Charles
Photography - Sven Kristian
“
don’t leave the house too often these days. I suppose that most of us who are fortunate enough to be able to work from home and comfortably shelter-in-place until the Covid-19 storm has passed are in the same monotonous boat. Of course, I’m aware that I do have the safe and legal option of taking a socially-responsible stroll through the thoroughly-ventilated pastures of a nearby hiking trail. However, the pressure of the global pandemic has a way of pressing down on my anxiety’s accelerator pedal and launching it into a speed that I’m not too comfortable travelling at.
SO, ALTHOUGH A MOMENTARY MEANDER in the great outdoors would be beneficial to my mental health, I find it easier to simply park myself indoors and observe the outside world through the frames of my windows and the screens that I surround myself with. And, when I grow weary of peering into that world, I shift my focus to the world framed within a painting by Cape Town-based multi-disciplinary artist, Amy Ayanda, that I have hanging on my wall. Be it the image of a field of flowers, a mountain, or the body of a mother - Amy’s paintings are an enrapturing window into a world of vivid imagination and tender reflection. Using her canvases as an exercise in reflecting upon her personal and historical ties to the land that surrounds her, Amy’s work is a vibrant embodiment of the intimacies of one’s own environment and upbringing. From ruminations of her great-grandmother’s flower farm in Constantia (from which the family was forcibly removed in the 1960s under the Group Areas Act) to the sites of the proteas, fynbos and mountainous terrain familiar to those who have traversed through the Cape - there is a wonder and beauty in the world that Amy projects through her paintings.
- Find The Quiet / A3
