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POELETJIE SERIES: Tidal Pool Creatures
My Poeletjie series is inspired by the tidal rock pools of the South African Wild Coast’s rugged shore.
Kneeling at the edge of a tidal pool, I find myself drawn to its otherworldliness: Strange and intriguing precisely because it is just out of reach; a foreign environment to touch and observe but never belong. I find myself reaching for memories from a time when I lost myself in otherworlds more frequently, a time when recollections, experiences and wishful thinking merged. When the poetry of an idea, of a story, was more powerful than its claim to reality. To a time when paradise had not yet been driven from the face of the earth, but was still believed to be lingering somewhere on the fringes of the map, beyond this ocean or that mountain range.
The Poeletjie series - a group imaginary creatures and their cousins - has emerged from a fantastical microcosm where life has co-evolved in mysterious and fascinating ways, and where our constructed categories, our notions of entities with neat boundaries, are questioned. This is a merging of worlds, a botanical-animal-fungi-underwater hybrid tapestry of life, whose creatures are messengers weighed with distant memories of wonderment.
