he Trouble with Africa
by Vic Guhrs (published by Penguin Books), has recently
been released in South Africa. It's a passionate collection of short
stories about life in a safari camp. This beautifully presented
book includes images from his work as a wildlife artist, as well
as several photographs.
The stories are very readable
and full of rich detail, very much like his art. It's easy to get
lost in the sights and sounds of Africa while reading this book.
Who is Vic Guhrs?
Biography adapted from the website of the ©2005 The Everard Read Gallery.
Vic Guhrs left his childhood home in Hamburg, Germany at the age
of 22 to see the Africa of his boyhood dreams. In 1977, after having
studied art in Johannesburg and a long stint as a commercial artist,
he and his wife Pam and two small daughters moved to the bush camp
in Zambia of his famous father-in-law, game warden and professional
hunter, Norman Carr.
Guhrs held his first solo exhibition in 1974 in Johannesburg. Now,
instead of being wakened by the street noise of a busy European
city, Vic Guhrs is stirred from his dreams by the night calls, grunts
and coughs of the sulking predators that stalk his backyard in the
Luangwa National Park. Thousands of miles from trendy galleries
and art openings of his urban contemporaries, Guhrs works in his
studio in the solitude of the African bush, living close enough
to his subjects to hear their heartbeats. Unlike too many wildlife
artists who purchase static images from photographers and transform
them into animal anatomy within plausible settings, Guhrs is a direct
witness to the fleeting but immutable daily dramas of the animal
kingdom and recreates them as enduring works of art.
His
studio looks onto an ever-changing oxbow lagoon - a dry riverbed
for part of the year, but mostly filled with lush grasses for grazing
antelope, home to hippos and crocodiles, and a veritable flitting
rainbow of wading birds, bee-eaters and kingfishers. When the water
is gone, elephants and giraffes and noisy, brash baboons wander
within spying distance of Guhrs' canvases and paintbrushes.
"I never think of my paintings as animal portraiture or zoological
illustrations, even though there are formal elements of design and
composition in them," says the soft-spoken, borderline, shy artist.
"It is the visual dynamism, the metaphysical and emotional aspects
of confronting an animal that interest me ... the feeling you get
when you're alone in the bush and suddenly there's a lion or buffalo,
and the hair on your neck stands straight up."
In spite of his isolation from the urban art scene, Mark Read of
The Everard Read Gallery in Johannesburg 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."
Although Guhrs does not include the species homo sapiens
in his paintings, that predator's influence on the African landscape
is strongly felt.
"I never forget how closely human evolution is linked to animals.
Our ancestors grew up alongside them, hunted them and were hunted
by them," says Guhrs, who has found a great audience for his work
at hunting expositions like Safari Club International and GameCoin
Conventions, which he regularly attends. He thrives on the constant
contact with his prehistoric ancestors.
"No matter how complacent one becomes about animals, a few nights
in the bush with lions roaring and hyenas calling will stimulate
inevitable ancient and primeval reactions, demonstrating each time
just how close to each other we still are. That's why I paint animals."
Occasionally, his canvases provoke the viewer to weigh his position
on decidedly emotional issues like hunting, poaching and culling,
forcing him to banish his citified contemporary complacency about
the nature of nature - including homo sapiens - and confront
the African cosmos's harsh but awe-inspiring visual poetry.
Although a basically impressionist artist living in the midst
of an infinite wealth of colours, Guhrs tends to allow only a limited
number onto his palette. He confines himself to a muted and narrow
tonal area - the browns, sepias, duns and ambers of his Africa's
dry season. Subtle changes in hue, tint and shade are used to demonstrate
movement, such as the high grass being pushed aside by elephants.
They also serve to bind together a ferris-wheel of images in his
montage-like compositions, preserving the canvas's visual balance.
Guhrs's work is becoming less obviously figurative: the forms are
increasingly wed to the surrounding vegetation and often seen just
emerging from the dusty yellow light, camouflaging the precise silhouette
and thereby evoking the mystery associated with elusive species
like kudu, eland and bongo. The result is a kind of synthesis of
the various elements of each specie's unique ecosystem.
Every person who puts his foot on African soil is transformed by
the sudden stepping back into the very fabric of life from which
humankind arose. Amongst the animals, one gropes to understand one's
place in history and in the universe. Great wildlife art that is
based on personal experience and an understanding of the whole essence
of the African bush is not only a witness to a vanishing world,
but helps us both to discover and to remember that place - even
when we are safely ensconced in an armchair at home.
