Africa, Continent of Dualities
By Trent Thursby Alvey

I spent February and March of this year in southern Africa. . Round River Conservation Studies, an international wildlife conservation organization, had invited me to their research station in Namibia. The project splits its three-month semester in Namibia between the Cheetah work near the Waterburg Plateau and the Rhino research in Dhamarland in northwestern Namibia.

Part of going to Africa was to reconsider my life. To let go of certain things. In letting go, I hoped that I would find my truth. Letting go is the reason I chose Africa. It was about as far away as I could get from Utah and still remain gravity bound. I felt I had completed a creative era in my life and needed to move forward. I was becoming tired of my graphic design business. I felt like I was too involved in my daughter and grandchildren’s lives. I felt bound by old ties. I needed some time alone. I wanted to paint. I craved simplicity. I knew that the healing would have to do with the passing of time. I decided on being away two months.

The two months began with a week at Cheetah View Ranch, my base camp. Before I could paint, I had to go through what I call the “Africa Learning Curve.” You must become proficient at carrying extra gas and water, having a compass or global positioning system with you, carrying at least two spare tires and making sure you have the expertise to change them, learning to go to town and not get anything stolen, develop a search pattern for snakes and other wildlife, obtain a mosquito net, learn to understand the Afrikaners English dialect, and basically stay alert.

In preparing to paint, I try to obtain the art materials that I haven’t been able to take on the airlines. I need Liquin, Gesso, Turpentine and boards. The last two are easy. The first two more difficult. The Liquin is an absolute necessity for painting in such heat and wind; without it the paint would not paint. It takes a week and fourteen phone calls to Windhoek (Namibia’s largest city) to get it.. I can’t find Gesso. I’m using an acrylic house paint primer, that I find I like better than Gesso because I can sand it lightly and get a very smooth ground.

Deciding to go to Namibia to practice plein-aire painting, in retrospect, was absolute insanity. Plen-aire painting should be done in the South of France, where figures sit at cool and shady tables, with warm dappled sunlight spilling over everything. Impressionism could never have taken place in Africa.

Inspired by an outdoor painting workshop in Helper, Utah, I knew that 60 percent of the job is to over come the elements . . . heat, intense sun, bugs and wind. But in Namibia there are other menacing eventualities. Biting red ants are ubiquitous. To paint I had to stand in the back of my pick-up or sit on the tailgate, only touching the ground to retrieve a dropped brush. The ants seem to anticipate my next footfall by gathering in that spot. Dung beetles fly through the air like vintage B-52 bombers. One smacked me in the forehead while I was riding in an open truck. Then there are ticks. The high grass is full of them, small red ones that sit on the shoulder-high grass with their little feet stretched outward waiting for a hapless victim, human or animal, to pass by. These ticks may cause high fever, delirium and possible permanent vision impairment, so frequent tick checks are advisable. There is also the temperature, which soars to heat stroke levels shortly after 10am.

Then there are the serious problems, poisonous snakes. Puff Adders, Cape Cobras and Black Mambas are, unfortunately, too easily found. A researcher related her black mamba experience to me. One morning, while driving on a two track she saw what she thought was a stick across the road. As she drove over it, she said to herself, “Black Mamba.” Just as the thought occurred to her, the Mamba struck at her window, which was halfway rolled up. Typically it would be down with her arm out the window. My worst fears are confirmed, Mambas can stand erect, lifting two-thirds of their body length as they try to get you through the window of your truck, just as local folklore claims. Their bites are almost always fatal and they can move faster than you can run.
Of course there are also the large carnivores -- Leopard, Cheetah and Hyena. But these aren’t a worry, unless you are painting at sunset or by moonlight.

Leaving half hour before sunrise, I drive around, checking out a couple of places that I have in mind to paint. I want to be at my chosen spot at sunrise, so that I can see how the sun enlivens my composition. When the sun comes up, it mingles delicately with the red dirt and becomes the warmest sunrise I’ve ever experienced. This is the time of day that all of the birds are pulsing across the savanna, hunting, perching, diving; eagle, vulture, weaver, roller, shrike, heron; walking around are the ostrich, korhaan, and kory bustard.

Despite all the menacing eventualities, Africa is brilliant. The colors are exquisite. You can enjoy stunning, big sky sunrises and sunsets, brief as they are in such a flat landscape. You have either unbelievable blue skies or dramatic cumulous clouds rolling powerfully across the sky with sudden downpours in the rainy season, cooling everything off. There are beautiful flowering trees and bushes in pink, magenta, and yellow. You see red dirt, grey-green agave and acacia. Birds like the Lilac Breasted Roller sport turquoise, magenta, lime green, white and gray feathers. One image sticks in my mind. I saw a phthalo blue, iridescent Starling sitting atop a warm, gray, dead tree snag with a cerulean blue sky behind.

Painting mirrors the dichotomies of Africa. A good painting is one that creates opposites that work together to create a tension or interest. Paint is thick in areas and thin in others, there are busy areas of the composition and calm ones, the hue can be bright in some areas and dull in the rest, the light and dark values are critical. I’ve heard these dichotomies referred to as push and pull. Painting, as such, is a dichoptic exercise, looking at a subject through two eyes, attempting to squint-down into seeing the image flat, as if from one eye. In fact trying to bring two images into one.

Setting up requires about 20 minutes. The tripod, the turpentine and liquin, umbrella, rags, paint itself and a hat. Then the next two hours go by without much notice, a couple of utilitarian mishaps with brushes or rags, a few scoldings by resident Blacksmith Plovers or Grey Louries trying to scare me away, but otherwise time is suspended.

Namibia is a country of push and pull. It is one in which there is no room for self-pity, but it is surprisingly forgiving. Not forgiving in your level of preparedness, but forgiving by allowing you time and space to think and consider. I believe it is a place that you can become the person you want to be. There is a freedom there like I’ve never experienced in my life. Of course, there is also apartheid. It is alive and well in Namibia. This is a place of dualities and paradoxes, of pain and pleasure, of cruelty and kindness.

Black Namibians have little in comparison to their white countrymen. They work for the white owned ranches for around $50 a month. They are modestly educated. They can barely clothe their families. Their main staple is mealy-meal, a ground corn (grits, in the South), while the Afrikaners eat meat, meat and meat. The blacks hitchhike rides in the backs of pick-ups. The Afrikaners drive. There is a tension of static versus change. Afrikaners are very frightened of what is happening in neighboring Zimbabwe. They do not want social change to occur in Namibia with the violence that has ruined the Zimbabwean economy and claimed so many lives. It is a tragedy.

For my 55th birthday I decided to go to the top of the Waterburg Plateau to paint. This is one of two high places in Namibia; the other is Brandburg Mountain, where the Sans Bushman cave paintings are concentrated. There is a wildlife park with Rhino, Cheetah, Giraffe, Cape Buffalo, Impala, Kudu and Oryx. There is also a mass grave. In 1904 the Germans fought the indigenous Herero people for their traditional homeland. The Herero fought bravely retreating to the Waterburg. The Germans won the battle. Their goal to exterminate the Herero, is now referred to locally as the original holocaust.

I spent a week in Swakopmund, a slice of Germany, perched on the edge of the Namib Desert. Built by the Germans in 1893, it is a resort town so quaint and historic, that it naturally attracts artists.

I join the Swakop ladies to paint the historic lighthouse. We have a great time. They share their coffee and donuts on a dewy coastal morning. They are all using watercolor as their medium of choice because it can be done quickly. They are surprised, but complimentary, that I can get an oil painting done in 3 hours. But, they can’t believe that I am traveling and painting alone and warn me to be very careful. There is always danger in a place where some have so much and others have so little.

In Swakopmund I also met a young man named Daniel William, who said he was an artist, too. I gave him my notebook and a pencil to draw with one day. He can’t afford even a pencil. I drove him to his home one evening, a place most visitors don’t see. A shantytown about 10 miles out of Swakopmund, with around 5000 people living in shelters fashioned from found objects, tin, cardboard, etc. He lives with his mother and two brothers. Before I left I bought him some pastels and paper.

It seems so easy to make a difference in Namibia. At Cheetah View I met the six high school students and their teacher that make up the Okakarara Conservation Club. On the first visit, they joined us for the weekend. We painted together and completed a couple of art projects. Their teacher told me that they were planning to clean up the hospital as a community gesture, but had been given no budget by the town and couldn’t afford to get garbage bags. I gave the club a gift of $300, about $50 US. They were so excited that they all lined up to shake my hand and say, “Thank you Madame.” One young man kissed me on the lips. We cooked large quantities of meat for them and they swept the dirt in the yard and washed all the trucks. Everything looked very tidy.

On the second visit I drove to their school in Okakarara. I asked them to paint a picture of their communal farm. They board at the school, but go home to visit their family farm one week a month. I asked them to include people, animals domestic and wild, that they see on their farm. Their paintings were both simple and complex. They had learned a lot about wildlife and ecology in their conservation group and they demonstrated their knowledge in the paintings, but they approached the depiction of their life with simple honesty and optimism. They revealed the wealth that comes from love of community. Such hope for the future is something I don’t see at home in America anymore. I felt my own skepticism washed away as they talked about their paintings. They gave me a priceless gift.

I seem to attract audiences of mostly black teenagers and people selling things. A young man watched me for three hours as I painted the Jetty in Swakopmund. His name was Hardly and he said very little, but occasionally questioned me on my choice of color. He wanted to know if I was German and I told him I was American. He said, “You are not like most white people here, you are very nice.” Most whites won’t talk to blacks. The white folks are very afraid.

Dhamaraland is a dreamlike landscape, communal lands for the Ovamba and Himba people. It resembles southern Utah, but has odd shaped mountains and trees that look like Broccoli. I was fortunate to observe Rhinos very close-up. If the Rhino looks at you are to freeze. They recognize you as a danger only if they smell you. I watched a female and baby for about 2 hours. Dhamarland transitions into the Skeleton Coast, the driest place on the planet. Elephant, Lion, Leopard, Impala, and Springbok also roam this waterless landscape.

As time passed in my ritual of painting, talking to people, and understanding the complexities of Namibia, I began to feel more and more comfortable in my own skin. I had very few needs. I came to understand that the way to accept myself is to accept others. I had found my truth. Finding truth is finding Bliss. It is not apocalyptic. It is a gradual realization. It is removing the obscurations gradually, and then suddenly they all fall away. Letting go and giving up control is the way to a simpler, more realized life. I rediscovered the joy of the things I had had all along, but couldn’t appreciate because of the chaos; love of spouse, family, friends, humanity. Simplify. Let go. Trust. It is the way a painting sometimes comes together easily with fewer brushstrokes.
Through the practice of painting, I am learning to squint down on life. The dichotomies of Africa have provided me the lenses with which to do it. This has been my life-long process, of bringing dichotomies together. Lao Tzu said that hope and despair are the same thing. It is about finding the middle ground. I used to think that middle ground meant a compromise between two opposites, watering-down to half-and-half, but it is really about transcending the concept of opposite. Could this have been the purpose of my work for the last nine years? I’ve entitled my paintings things like The Sacred and the Profane. I dedicated my last installation at Art Access to the concept . . . The Illusion of Separateness.

In retrospect, all of the wisdom we seek is obtained through non-questioning and non-seeking. That is the paradox, which can only occur when we are in the moment, not thinking about what was done before or about what will be done next.

Cleaning up takes about 20 minutes, as well. Cleaning each brush in turpentine and then treating each brush with a lanolin hand crème, which conditions both the brushes and my hands. I see a curious Jackal watching me from a distance. I realize how very, very fortunate I am.