Although his
subjects are often the animals that were his neighbours during his time in the
bush, Guhrs does not regard himself as a wildlife artist.
Mark Read of the Everard
Read Gallery in Johannesburg agrees. In spite of his isolation from the urban
art scene, he places Vic Guhrs in the ranks of major contemporary African
artists rather than in the mainstream of so-called "Wildlife artists", whom he
accuses of endlessly rehashing scenes of majestically tusked elephants dozing
under umbrella acacias or sagacious leopards nonchalantly draped over branches
in front of a setting sun. "Vic's work can be equally appreciated in New York or
London or Sydney or Tokyo because he is an artist, not just an amateur with a
paintbrush in search of an appealing wildlife subject."
Much
of wildlife art, although often competently, even beautifully painted, borders
on the sentimental and has little bearing on our experience of the contemporary
world in which we live. We have moved on from the time when large predators
threatened our lives and wolves stole our sheep, and serious art needs to
acknowledge that. And yet it only takes a night in the African bush (or any
other wilderness), sleeping under canvas among prowling night predators and the
distant call of a hyena echoing along the bank of a moonlit river, to reignite
an old spark and remind us that the thread of a connection with our wild
heritage remains.
In
dreams, as in close encounters in the wild, our reaction to these creatures is
immediate and vivid. The stare of a lion’s yellow eyes transports us straight
back into the ancient world we once shared. At a time when our planet is facing
a serious environmental crisis, our relationship with the remaining wildlife
bears closer examination.
We need to find a place for
them not only in the shrinking sanctuaries we set aside for them, but in our
hearts and minds.
Many species are leaving the planet.
Tigers are about to go forever, African Wild Dogs may follow soon, and the Black
Rhinos are all but gone from their old habitats. Does the extinction of so many
species herald our own demise too? It’s a question that deserves serious
consideration as we head bravely into the 21st century.
But these paintings are not
about endangered species; they are not warning signs. Rather, they are an
acknowledgement of a lost brotherhood. And perhaps they can remind us of a time
when we, too, roamed the plains. When our senses were sharper, when alertness
was essential to our survival, before it was dulled by millennia of soft
living.
On our long journey from our shared
hunting grounds to the safe suburban lives we have created for ourselves,
animals were excluded. In the totems and shamanistic interactions of many native
tribes, the bond between beast and man is still intact, but in our Western rush
towards an ‘enlightened’ civilized state, we have left the animals behind.
As a consequence we no
longer have adequate words to describe the emotions that still exist somewhere
deep within us. ‘In my paintings I try to find a visual language. Our written
words have proved inadequate in our dealings with animals. Their spiritual
presence in our lives – in our dreams – has no correlation in the ‘reality’ of
our materialistic world.
Our religions have placed us
in an exalted position well above the multitude of other life on this planet.
This self-styled eminence has allowed us to lord it over the other creatures: to
eat them, to hunt them, to use them for sport and entertainment, and cheap
labour.
In our quest for knowledge
we collected, we classified, we ordered and experimented, but do we really know
them?
Animals still visit our
dreams, and in our dreams they are real. Sometimes we communicate with them
directly, sometimes merely by the fact that their visits leave a lingering and
powerful after-image on the retina of our mind. To examine this fragile
connection, it seems to me, we need a different language, a set of pointers that
may jolt our souls out of their apathy and illuminate the special and very real
kinship we still share.
In a series of recent paintings, Guhrs
has turned from portraying the animals themselves to exploring the emotional
reaction they provoke in us.
‘I am interested in the
space they occupy in our minds - the way we communicate, the way we acknowledge
(or take for granted) the debt we owe them: the debt of companionship, of labour,
of our shared ancestry.
In works like ‘Friends’ the power
balance between the woman and her dog is left deliberately ambiguous, hinting at
a shifting mutual dependence on a deeper level than is immediately apparent. The
dog’s eyes give us an insight into his soul – dogs have been our companions for
thousands of years, and perhaps see things about us that we lo longer know
ourselves.
‘Falcon’, while paying homage to Yeats’
famous poem, addresses such imponderables as ‘earthbound versus flight’, ‘tame
versus wild’, a human longing to be other than we are. On one level it
celebrates the bird’s independence, its refusal to be controlled by us.
We may feel compelled to subdue it, to
‘tame’ it and take away its freedom; we may place it in a cage but we can never
break its spirit.
The woman in this painting
is caught in a pose of supplication, of worship, and perhaps a desire to
communicate. Is the bird, too, expressing a cautious intent to bridge a gap,
perhaps to reconcile?
The little dog in the art gallery,
looking perplexed yet patient in this man-made environment, seems at ease with
himself, oblivious of the pictures – the symbols of man’s ‘civilisation’ that
hang on the wall behind him.
These paintings are not to be understood
as anthropomorphic metaphors but as head-on questions that require direct
answers: What have we done to our natural heritage and what can we do to rectify
past mistakes?
