Displaced • Oil On Canvas • 120 x 200cm
When I visited Kroonstad early in 2010, it seemed to me to be a place struggling to find its feet. The river that runs through the town felt like an artery with no oxygen in the blood it was carrying. It was a neglected, sad place to me, and it was as if the town was in a stalemate, that it couldn’t move forward without someone feeling hurt or unjustly treated. I wanted to understand more about the history of the area and found Antjie Krog’s magnificent book “A Change of Tongue” to be very soulful and enlightening. “Displaced” is about this sense of loss that still pervades some of South Africa.