September 27, 2025 - October 25, 2025
492 Fehrsen Street, Pretoria, South Africa
The Weight of Story
Emotions that outlive the stories they tell.
Stories have always been my way of understanding the world. Myths, scriptures, and legends may seem distant, yet they endure because they carry emotions we still recognise.I am drawn to these stories for their fragile, human moments within them. In my paintings I return to the truth expressed in emotions written on the face and to the silence between action and consequence like Medusa before she hardens into stone, Medea weighing her choice with knife in hand, Pandora at the brink of opening her jar and Eros pausing before loosing his arrow. These are moments of hesitation, of decision, of carrying a weight that cannot be undone. I work slowly in oil, layering light and shadow to echo the chiaroscuro of the Old Masters, but always with the intent to bring the myth close, not to keep it distant. My palette is subdued, my figures solemn, their gazes steady. I am not retelling the story in words or in action, but in allowing memory itself to take form. The works in The Weight of Story are not about gods or monsters alone, but about us. They remind us that the emotions within myth outlive the stories that first carried them, and that in meeting the eyes of these figures, we are meeting something of ourselves.
