Food for Thought
Exhibition of works by Rhonda Fenwick and Inge Du Plessis - 17 February to 5 April 2012
“We do not live by bread alone” ...
Being present to the moment, being still, responding to space and time, creating work inspired by this process. Being unafraid to commit images to paper that have found their way beyond my preconceptions. The unknown quantity is where it takes me and as the “thing” emerges it accedes to its non-logical self. It is something, it is nothing. The work has been born out of the essence of the soul and that is what it is about... my inner soul. Art and life are inseparable. This is soul food.
Rhonda Fenwick
When I started this series of women and consumables, I was viewing the subject of the rich and complex relationship between women and food from a rather more cynical perspective.
I was interested in the all-consuming role food plays in women's lives; from the constant, often weary acquisition and preparation of food for the family, the inescapable, mostly fraught personal relationship we have with food, to the overwhelming and insistent presence of food in the media.
I started painting the sitters and then added the food separately afterwards. In this process, however, the rich relationship between sitters and painter changed the dynamic for me and involuntarily changed my attitude to a far more empathic portrayal of women and the Sustenance with which we surround ourselves. Although I tried to steer clear of the paintings being straight portraits and rather used the sitters as role players in a quiet narrative. I found that the quite intimate and vulnerable act of painting these dynamic women very positively influenced my creative process.
Inge Du Plessis
Rhonda Fenwick