It has been many years now since I left my home in Africa. Yet the yearning for the land and its people still stirs deep in my soul.

At the southernmost point of Africa lies South Africa, the land of my birth and the home of my ancestors. It is an ancient land of stark contrasts, of dramatic landscapes, raw color, and magnificent open vistas.

This series of paintings, Echoes of Africa, explores some of my most deeply embedded memories of South Africa’s landscapes. With each of the paintings, I found myself filled with vivid recollections of the stillness and the awe I experienced in that moment. I heard the dry crunch of the frost-covered grass of the Highveld. I smelled the smoke that lingers in the valleys in winter, and the tantalizing scent of the earth that precedes the approach of a late afternoon thunderstorm. I felt the heat on my skin and witnessed the miracle of growth in the desert. And I walked along a dusty farm road with the scent of the Eucalyptus trees in my nostrils and the warm dust beneath my bare feet. As I paint, I lose myself in mixing the colors, in finding the feel and atmosphere of the moment. I am immersed in the painting and often lose all sense of time.

The exploration of the memories through my work in this series of paintings has brought both healing and inspiration in very unexpected ways. The wrenching pain of having to leave my beloved country all those years ago has eased, and the work has renewed my wonder at the magnificence and beauty that surrounds us every day on this planet we call home.

Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk.

“The Way to Rainy Mountain” by N. Scott Momaday