Strauss & co - 9 November 2015, Johannesburg

173 colours and textures. During this phase of his career, Skotnes’ figures convey a condition of being or a state of consciousness rather than the moments of action and heroism depicted in his earlier work. Harmsen refers to the ‘tragic nudes and monumental heads’ 3 that appear in his work at this time. She also quotes AJ Werth, another scholar, noting how such figures seemed ‘visceral, touching deeply inward feelings. Sometimes the figures literally appeared to be cut open, disembowelled, the emotions themselves spilling out in a scream of pain and anguish’. 4 In the central panel, three highly abstracted figures dominate the space, two in the foreground in red, brown, black and white, and an orange one in the centre and background. A small area that appears to be water and sky floats behind the orange figure. The anguish of the foregrounded figures may also be related to a historical narrative, and an exploration of the roots of South Africa’s social and political environment, what Walter Battiss called Skotnes’‘angst of Africa’ 5 . The patch of water and sky is reminiscent of the arrival of the English settlers in his large series of panels at the 1820 Settlers’ Monument in Grahamstown. This work also has the trademarks of another recurrent theme in Skotnes’s work around this time – confrontations between good and evil. The reds and greys of the figures in the foreground contrast with the orange of the figure in the background, suggesting difference and confrontation. 1. Skotnes, Pippa. (1996) ‘At the Cutting Edge: Cecil Skotnes as Printmaker’ in Harmsen, F. (ed.). Cecil Skotnes, Cape Town: South African Breweries. Page 85. 2. Harmsen, Frieda. (1996). ‘Artist resolute’ in Harmsen, F. (ed.). Cecil Skotnes, Cape Town: South African Breweries. Page 14. 3. Ibid. Page 49. 4. Ibid. Page 49. 5. Ibid. Page 21.