"Freedom"

Painted in 1994, Durban, South Africa

I painted Freedom in my first year studying Fine Art at the Durban University of Technology (then Natal Technikon), in the days just after the 1994 election — the election that ended more than four decades of apartheid and for the first time gave every adult in South Africa the right to vote, regardless of race. The reference material for the painting was a political poster my sister pulled off a lamp post after the election. (I wish we still had that poster.) It was creased and sun-bleached and full of hope.

When they announced that Mandela had won, I was stuck in traffic in the middle of Durban. It was evening. And the city went WILD. Horns, singing, people pouring into the streets, dancing on cars, crying, screaming and some conflicts.

I wanted to paint him differently. Not in the usual browns and documentary colours, but in the colours that were a little different — rose, violet, gold, teal, the colours of a sunrise after a very long night.

This painting is not just a portrait of Nelson Mandela. It is a portrait of that evening in traffic. Of a poster on a lamp post. Of a first-year art student realizing that sometimes paint can witness history.

Shortly after that myself and my friends went to see our first international band. We had never seen an international live before due to decades of sanctions. It was a cheesy American boy band but it was also symbolicaly a significant event for us and the newly opened up country.