Series IV: Truth and Reconciliation Exhibition 

Eleven paintings explore the processes of seeking truth and striving towards justice and reconciliation.  The concepts of truth, justice and reconciliation take many forms, are not absolutes and represent movement over time towards an ideal.  We never have all the truth.  One person’s justice is another’s revenge.  And reconciliation is on-going and a matter of degree.  Seeking truth, arriving at justice and affecting reconciliation are processes that are multi-faceted, convoluted and often evasive.  My paintings are intended to evoke these complexities and and be metaphors for these processes.

I approached the painting process through the creation of a personal symbolic language to signify the essence of what took place.  The cell as the essential determinant of human behavior references the individual and also responsibility and accountability.  Other elements and patterns, from both the land and the people, coalesce to create maps linking the past with the present.  In this way the pieces of apartheid reality and the processes involved in seeking truth, justice and reconciliation intersect to form the connective tissue of my artistic expression.

The voices of both victims and perpetrators needed to be heard.  For the TRC, all the participants and every South African finding the words and hearing the voices was a courageous struggle.  And for me transforming this process became a redemptive practice.  Uncovering the past, revealing the truth and acknowledging responsibility began the process of breaking down the barriers and bridging the divisions.  It was a long and tortuous journey to a destination that often seemed ephemeral and elusive.

                  “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak.
                   Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
                            Winston Churchill

                                              

Next:   View images from Truth, Justice and Reconciliation (Series IV)