Saturday, 17 May 1986: Impressionistic Paintings of African People

3:30 PM, east of Bloemfontein on Highway 8. 

After leaving Thaba Nchu in the quasi-independent Bophuthatswana black homeland, Woolfie, Irene, and I headed east and were soon back in South Africa again.  Irene said we were now passing through an area called Westminster which had been settled by English farmers after the Boer War of 1899 to 1902.  It’s most unusual to have English-speaking farmers in the Orange Free State.  Nearly all rural people are Afrikaners.

Further east, we reached the small town of Tweespruit where we visited Father Frans Claerhout, a 67-year-old Belgian Catholic priest who has been in South Africa working with Tswana and Sotho people since 1946.  He is also an artist who paints oils of black people and their communities.  In the late 1950s, he took up painting and his primitive style has a touch of impressionism in it.  Irene and Woolfie are admirers of Claerhout’s work and they wanted me to meet him.

“MUSIC” by Frans Claerhout.  Reproduced from Cather of the Sun, Tafelberg Publishers, 1983.

 

We arrived at his home next to his parish church and nursery school about the same time as a family of Afrikaner art lovers.  I found that Claerhout’s English isn’t all that understandable (he speaks at least six languages), and he talks a great deal in artistic abstractions.  Nevertheless, he has a hearty laugh and a jovial manner.  One of Claerhout’s friends, a local French Canadian priest, was visiting as well.  Out came the wine, cheeses, boerewors (Boer sausage), biltong (beef jerky), bread, and biscuits.  The Afrikaner family had brought a cake to share.  The Canadian priest and I talked about Third World development while the others discussed art and life in general. 

After lunch and much wine, I staggered with the others a couple hundred feet to Claerhout’s studio where he showed us his latest work and talked about some of the pieces.  The guy has a bit of an ego but hey, why not?  Some of his work is in South African galleries, and he’s going to have an exhibition in Boston in a few months.  Claerhout is an unforgettable character, and I couldn’t resist buying a book of his paintings (Catcher of the Sun, Tafelberg Publishers, Cape Town, 1983).  

Frans Claerhout (right) holding forth in his studio for a group of fans  

  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thursday-Friday, 5-6 June 1986: An Amazing Employment Opportunity!!!

Image
June 6, 10:00 AM, Thornhill Government Guest Flats, Gaborone, Botswana Yesterday, I stumbled into an amazing, serendipitous opportunity.   While I had found my barroom conversations in Gaborone with the two British accountants very informative, I wanted to get some additional perspective on Botswana from local residents.   So, I took a walk to the campus of the University of Botswana hoping to meet a geography professor or two for a chat.   I stopped at the administration building and explained to the receptionist that I was an American geographer travelling through Botswana and was wondering if they had a geography department at the university.   No, they didn’t but they have an environmental science department.   I figured that was close enough having worked in environmental consulting for several years.   Were any of the environmental science professors around that I could perhaps meet?   The receptionist wasn’t sure because final exams were about...
Read more

Sunday, 12 October 1986: Extolling the Ex-Pat Lifestyle

Image
Gaborone, Botswana Look, it’s not that life here in Botswana is all that exciting, but there is something indescribable about living abroad.   It’s like my friend, Karen Collins from Lewistown, Montana, said recently when she was driving me back from a Monday night Hash House Harriers run out in the bush:   “People back in the States have no appreciation for the challenges of just getting by here like having to deal with getting stopped three times in one night by army roadblocks.”   Yes, the average American would be totally freaked out or pissed off by the automatic-rifle-toting Botswana Defense Force soldiers who had just stopped us and asked us to open up our packs.   We took it in stride and had a very polite, friendly interchange with the soldiers.   By the way, the reason for all the roadblocks was that we were driving not far from the South African border. The Botswana government is concerned about South African commando raids to go after ANC guerril...
Read more

Monday, 23 February 1987: Following a Long, Scenic Route to Pietermaritzburg

Image
February 24, 9:00 PM, Hotel Walter, Bergville, Natal Province, South Africa   Early yesterday morning, I rented the cheapest car I could find in Durban:  A Mazda 323 hatchback.  At R43.50 per day (including insurance, sales tax, and unlimited mileage, it was still a bit expensive for my budget.  I immediately headed southwest from Durban along the N2 freeway, which mostly runs a couple miles inland of the Indian Ocean coastline.   After 60 kms, I turned away from the coast on a two-lane highway which wound through sugar cane fields and African rondovals (round African residential huts).   The verdant and very hilly landscape was spectacular and quite a contrast to dry and mostly flat Botswana.   However, the bleak and foggy weather sucked for photography.   Lush landscape near Umzinto, Natal.  Sugarcane fields in the background.   I reached Ixopo near the Transkei “border”, a town made famous in South Africa by Alan Paton’s best-...
Read more