Visionary Artists, Parallel Lives -Gladys Mgudlandlu

31 Gladys Mgudlandlu Cape Township Scene gouache on paper 53,5 by 74 cm private collection In the Cape Peninsula, Mgudlandlu saw rows of box-like houses instead of landscapes marked by rondavels, with their conical thatched roofs and walls the colour of soil [which were characteristic of the Eastern Cape]. The white painted surrounds of the doorways and windows of the rondavels of her youth were absent in the houses of Nyanga and Gugulethu. However, she remembered the sacred and protective power of white when she conscientiously painted the white surrounds of the doors and windows of the homesteads evoked by her childhood memories. Mgudlandlu called the Nyanga and Gugulethu houses that recurred in the paintings pondokkies (shanties). She said that she loved pondokkies and ‘spent many years living in them’ until she moved into a ‘real’ house. For her these shanties were elements of the past. Elza Miles (2002) Nomfanekiso Who Paints at Night: The Art of Gladys Mgudlandlu , Cape Town: Fernwood Press, page 44 and 46.