Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Kimberley


Another town, another church. After three months of basic training at 5SA Infantry Batallion in Ladysmith in the then Natal, I was put on a train to Kimberley. I had achieved my first objective - getting out of the infantry. Or so I thought. All graduates - I had a higher diploma in art and design - were given the opportunity of going on various officer's courses. I had heard that "Burgersake", or Civic Action, was a good bet, but only realised after arriving at 1 Intelligence Unit, outside Kimberley, that this was to be the heart of the SADF's military intelligence operation, for which I cared not one iota. So I must have trundled into Kimberley around early October, 1979. And sure enough, one Sunday I was back in church. This time it was a venerable old Anglican church, or even possibly a cathedral, it looked so larnie.


The facade, if I recall correctly, of the Anglican cathedral in Kimberley, which would have been an escape haven on Sundays during the next part of my conscription ordeal - a further three-month officer's course at 1 Intelligence Unit.


I suspect this was a view inside that Kimberley cathedral. Note the focus on a young woman's radiant blonde hair on the left. I have always enjoyed the interiors of old English churches like this one.


One of my favourite drawing ploys is to make a distant object, like the clergyman here, the focal point, with the images closer to the viewer drawn increasingly loosely.


The loose lines of the congregants on the left make, I believe, a nice contrast with the more detailed minister and pulpit in the distance.


The austere surroundings here makes me think this was drawn on a bizarre occasion when I attended a Dutch Reformed Church service.



1 comment:

  1. I was a conscript in Kimberley in 1986. I pretended to be an Anglican simply because it was Bishop Tutu's church. But I was soon glad I did, because the Sunday escape to the Anglican cathedral was always a high point of my week: beautiful old building, professional level musicians, incense - it was marvelous. :-)

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