Bushman of the Kalahari

I have mislaid a week of my life!

Not really, but that's what it feels like. I was sitting at the SASA Annual Exhibition at Kirstenbosch last week until Thursday, then Friday first thing, it was on the 'plane to Johannesburg for a friend's daughter's wedding. Only got back last night, so have done nothing with a brush for over a week!

This painting is of a Bushman, one of those incredible hunter gatherer people who are the original inhabitants of this country. They owned no land (they believe only God owns the land) and lived off it in much the same way the Aboriginal people of Australia and the Red Indians in America did.

Their ability to live in desert conditions is amazing and in this painting he is using his bow and arrow as a musical instrument.

The Bushmen, often referred to as the San or the generic term Khoisan, are the remnants of Africa's oldest cultural group, genetically the closest surviving people to the original Homo-Sapien core from which the Negro emerged. They are small in stature generally with light yellowish skin, which wrinkles very early in life. Despite the later massive expansion of the pastoral and agrarian tribal cultures, those Bushman groups that utilised environments that were unsuitable for farming, survived until fairly recently with a high level of genetic purity.