Kin Bentley In Line: Around the Eastern Cape

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Around the Eastern Cape

A cluster of drawings and watercolours from the late-1980s reveals that I did a fair amount of travelling through the Eastern Cape.

This is a view towards some of the towering sand dunes along the coast at my beloved Bonza Bay, where I grew up.

Walk along the beach from Bonzies to Nahoon Mouth and you're likely to spot fishermen on the rocks, their lines buffeted by the often turbulent surf.

This seems to be a view from the Nahoon side of Bonza Bay towards Gonubie.

Cape Recife is a wonderful nature reserve at the point of the Port Elizabeth peninsula. I have a feeling one or two of the old houses adjacent to the historic lighthouse have been demolished in recent years.

Somehow, purely by chance, this acquired a wonderful nautical feel. Below is a sketch of a trawler in Algo Bay, while above is a man on a bench overlooking the sea. What mystifies me is what the ship's wheel-like shape is.

This little rock, which juts out of the sea near Pollok Beach is a favoured resting place for cormorants. Notice the man walking amidst the rocks at low tide.

The Donkin Reserve was declared public open space by Sir Rufane Donkin, acting governor of the Cape, shortly after the arrival of the 1820 British settlers. Viewed through some of the foliage on "the Donkin" is the top of the clock tower on the Grey Institute (1859).

Just nearby is the Hill Presbyterian Church (1883). In the foreground are four of the row of Donkin Street terrace houses (1860-1880).

The St Matthews Mission Anglican church, which was built around 1855. My wife-to-be Robyn and I visited friends of hers at the mission in the late 1980s. He was a young minister, but later went back to university to study law.

Through my new partner I again got involved in the Karoo. She and her family, though based in Cape Town, had spent most of their childhood holidays on their grandparents' farm near Steynsburg. These two koppies, Teebus and Koffiebus, are near the farm. Foolishly, I started to paint a watercolour wash over the sky and found the ink simply ran all over the show.

This is one of the koppies viewed from Robyn's grandparents' farm, which was owned and run by her uncle when we visited.

I'm not sure where we ventured on this ostrich, but it was certainly on the move.

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About this blog

This blog has morphed from one thing to the next, and will continue to do so.

The latest offerings are of a political nature, though the main role of the blog is to put online scanned versions of my sketches, which make up the bulk of the first part.

* Earlier, I returned to a project I suspended on September 12, 2011, namely posting clilppings from my writings in the Herald newspaper in Port Elizabeth. From those you'll have gleaned that I was first prevented from writing political letters and articles critical of the ANC government.

Then my art reviews came under fire - from the hallowed halls of academia, no less.

* Before this, I posted a series of book reviews and an account of recent travels.

* There is also a short autobiographical novel, Little K and the Big World.

Below is a summary of what was posted before that. (NB. To view pictures larger, hold down "shift" and left click on the mouse. Click again to see it even larger.)

* During the 27 years I have worked as a journalist, I have kept random samples of my work. Initially, when I joined the Evening Post in Port Elizabeth in 1984, I kept a scrapbook, so those first years – when the anti-apartheid struggle really started hotting up – are fairly well covered.

By the time I joined the Eastern Province Herald in about 1988, I’d stopped collecting my stories, but I have one article I wrote that year which I think captures the mood of those dark times.

During two years in the UK – 1990 and 1991– when I worked as a correspondent for the SA Morning Newspaper group, I kept no cuttings. The same applies to the early 1990s when, back on the Herald, I covered the gradual transition to democracy. After the April 27, 1994, first non-racial elections, I moved to the sub-editing department, where I have been ever since.

When Robert Mugabe started his crackdown in 2000, I took up the pen again in a big way – and was lucky to have been given space by then editor Ric Wilson to vent my spleen in the Herald. In between, I wrote numerous book reviews and art crits, which balance out the offerings. I began this section with the more recent stuff, from 2000 onwards, and will take up this project again in 2012.

* Having all but exhausted my sketches on this blog - though I have yet to post pictures of my paintings and a few carvings - I thought I would digress into other areas of interest, and use a few of my photographs to illustrate them.

As Thabo Mbeki and the ANC set about rubbishing everything to do with our colonial past, I found myself rather cherishing what our ancestors had done here, notwithstanding my obvious detestation of the apartheid system which, had Jannie Hofmeyr lived to succeed Smuts after the Second World War, may not have happened. It is interesting to note that the National Party came to power in 1948 despite polling 100 000 fewer votes than the United Party. This was the effect of "loading" the urban constituencies.

Anyway, the East Cape has seen a fair share of interesting history down the centuries, some of which is covered here.

There is also history in stamps and envelopes. A few years back I went to a Port Elizabeth antique shop in the hopes I could acquire some old SA stamps from my youth. At first things looked bleak. The dealer only had posh albums of expensive stamps. But wait, he said, I do have a couple of black bin bags cluttering up the place somewhere, full of useless old stamps and envelopes. He gave them to me for about R100, if I recall correctly.

From these I have made several postage stamp-based artworks, photos of which I'll be posting, eventually. I also discovered a treasure trove of envelopes which had been posted to the City Treasurer of the PE Municipality as well as to the Divisional Council and another whole batch sent by dealers around South Africa to the Ford Motor Company in PE. These all date from the early 1960s, so we're talking 50 odd years ago. Each envelope tells a story.

* Initially I started this blog to illustrate how I learnt the art of drawing, after many years of toil, and how, once learnt, this skill has accompanied me throughout my life.

At each step, since about the mid-1970s, I have, where possible, made drawings that are often a more telling record than any photographs.

You will find a plethora of styles and techniques, but the bottom line – forgive the pun – is an attempt to get at the visual truth. As we go along, I explain each work and how I came to do it – that is, where I remember precisely when they were made.

* Remember, as this is a blog, the story starts from the first post and works its way upwards, as it were.

Click on the images to see them in a larger format. If you want an image to fill your computer screen, press F11. Press the same key to escape.

My thanks, again, go to my son, Douglas, who was just 16 when he helped me put together the header for this blog. Most of the more creative ideas - and all the technical expertise - in this regard were his.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Around the Eastern Cape

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