Lekgetho, Simon

Bobbie Burgers is a contemporary Canadian painter. Her lush and Expressionistic depictions of flowers teeter on the verge of abstraction, bursting with bright color and laden with thickly applied, textural paint. “Flowers, to me, are the opposite of still,” the artist has explained. “Changing from minute to minute, they are perfect symbols for life, death, yearning, and beauty. My brushstrokes are layered with my own internal charges, depicting anger, frustration, softness, wanting, and more.” Born in 1973 in Vancouver, Canada, she studied Art History at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. Her work has been exhibited widely at home and abroad, notably including Art Market San Francisco and Equinox Gallery. Today, her works are in the collections of the Berost Corporation in Toronto and the Royal Bank of Canada, among others. Burgers lives and works in Vancouver, Canada.

Lekgetho, Simon

Complete biography availableat: http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/simon-moroke-lekgetho.

A comment from the article posted on South African history website reads:

"His still-lives are unique. Unlike the vanitas

to which they relate, Lekgetho emphasizes healing, rebirth and continuity and not the transience of existence. Moreover, his use

of chiaroscuro intensifies the symbolism of these pieces. The dark backgrounds contrast the light foregrounds where the divination objects silently predict what is to ensue.

In Still-life with Sangoma’s bones and other objects (1964) the incense (mphephu) has been lit. While the smoke rises, a butterfly, mid-way in the pictorial space, hovers downwards between the objects and the smoke. The butterfly signifies the spirit of

the mphephu and is ‘a sign of the humble messenger who brings peace and happiness’. These still-lives consisting of calabashes, gourds, herbs, grinding stones, incense, divination dice, beads, shells, knuckle bones and stones give a significantly African dimension to still-life painting. He died in

Ga-Rankuwa, near Pretoria-Tshwane, 1985."