The road to Garies
In 2009 I took some time to take a drive North to a town called Garies. In the past I have seen beautiful flowers there and thought it would be a good place to investigate for watercolour opportunities. This posting is something about the road up to Garies. I have updated some of the text to repost the story.
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I have taken a couple of days to fill the well. My route has taken me North on the road to Namibia. I want to visit the town ‘Garies’. We camped there once as a family on our way up to paddle down the Orange River and I want to pause and look around.
This is a watercolour of the Piketberg from near the top of Piekeniers Pass. I have wanted to sit and do this for as long as I remember coming through here but of course I have always been going somewhere else. On this trip though I had come to paint watercolours so I sat on a rock wall and painted this watercolour. I was about finished when it started to rain. You can see the splatters on the painting. I think maybe I could have added a few more darks. The dark area in the foreground is an island of unploughed land in the middle of the field. I suppose there is an outcrop of granite or something.

Piketberg
Piketberg painted from Piekernierspas on the road to Garies
This was quite a nice little painting I thought. But I have this self-denigrating aspect to my self-evaluation so I eventually cut it in half and painted on the other side.
There is a town called Piketberg on the slopes of the mountain on the horizon of the painting. The Afrikaans people have a story about the town drunk who took a short-cut through the grave-yard late one night in his usual state. He fell into an open grave and passed out. He was woken late the next day by the sun shining in his face. He climbed out of the grave thinking he must have died and this was the resurrection. As he scrambled out of the grave he looked around and said “Swak Piketberg!”
(Swak – pronounced “swuk”) means “shame, bad, fail”, all wrapped in a word with a dash of “stupid” and lashings of contempt.
Anyway I continued the trip North towards Vanrhynsdorp where I sat next to the road to paint the iconic mountain there.
I was going to collate all of the notes into a single posting. However I made some friends online in what became the blogosphere and they left some precious notes which I want to keep. And I would love to hear your comment on this story.
Stephen, this is interesting because of the different shapes and the way nature gave you a balancing act of warm and cool colors. The sky looks full of moisture and I love what the water did to the distant mountaintops.
Just for my own information about the place, Are the distant rectangles fields and what is that lage dark green in the lower left that has a river rolling through? Your paintings make me want to visit these places.
yep, up to your usual good standard
Love the slash of green/blue in the sky! And the interesting shapes of the land patches are beautiful
Here’s a view from the road near Piketberg, where I wasn’t the only one to pull over to take a photo 🙂
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=4110520&id=736396748#!/photo.php?pid=4110519&id=736396748&fbid=390858606748
Somewhere equidistant between Aurora, Redlinghuis and perhaps Piketberg to the East, is a lodge and cottages in the mountains, where we had a jembe weekend.
The view from the mountain behind is a bit like your painting, but with the fields separated by trees – rolling hills with higher ones in the background. There are all sorts of buck wandering around, horse trails, etc. on that mountain.
Hey Chris – long long ago I went to place like that for a painting weekend. Could have been the same. All these huts between massive boulders of TMS. That is very beautiful country. I once worked with a woman who grew up there and she used to tell me how much fun they had. Jembe weekend sounds like a blast.
I have been dipping into your blog. lekker kos vir die kop – heh heh