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When shipping art internationally, two primary options are commonly considered: crated and rolled. Crating involves securely packaging the artwork in a custom-built crate, providing maximum protection against physical damage but often resulting in higher shipping costs due to size and weight. On the other hand, rolling art involves taking stretched paintings off the frame, carefully wrapping the artwork and placing it in a protective tube. This method is more cost-effective and suitable for flexible pieces. Choosing between crating and rolling depends on the specific artwork's size, fragility, and budget, as well as the destination's shipping requirements and regulations.
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This work is inspired by Mbaba Mwana Waresa, the Zulu goddess associated with rain, rainbows, agriculture, harvest and fertility. The painting reflects her as a life-giving presence whose power is tied to the nourishment of the land and the cycles of growth. It also alludes to her role as a teacher — the one who showed people how to sow, harvest and transform grain into beer, linking survival with ritual, community and abundance.
The composition presents the figure in a poised, upward-looking stance, giving her a sense of dignity and quiet authority. Her gaze suggests both vision and connection to the heavens, appropriate for a deity associated with rain and rainbow imagery. Positioned slightly off-centre, she feels both grounded and elevated, suspended between earth and sky.
Texture is central to the work. The surface is heavily layered, distressed and weathered, evoking soil, rock and organic matter shaped by time and the elements. The roughness of the background contrasts with the more defined facial features and patterned adornment, suggesting the relationship between cultivated order and raw nature. Drips and stains running through the composition echo falling rain, while the worn surface hints at agricultural cycles of labour, erosion and renewal.
The colour palette is especially significant. Purples, pinks and deep earthy browns dominate the image, creating an atmosphere that feels both fertile and spiritual. The purple tones may be read as an abstract evocation of richness, ripening and rain-laden skies, while the darker earth tones root the figure in the land. Her beaded adornment and patterned textiles introduce rhythm, craft and cultural identity, while also suggesting the celebratory dimension of harvest and communal life.
In its execution, the work combines realistic portraiture with expressive abstraction. This allows the figure to remain human and accessible while also becoming symbolic. In Mbaba Mwana Waresa, the female form becomes a vessel for fertility, abundance, teaching and renewal, embodying the sacred relationship between rain, cultivation and life.
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Stephen Symons
Stephen Symons
Stephen Symons was born in 1966 in Cape Town, South Africa, where he currently lives and works. Alongside his visual art practice, he runs a graphic design studio and works as a historian and author. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Pretoria, a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town, and a National Higher Diploma in Graphic Design from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. He has had two solo exhibitions, titled Nutria, related to his PhD research at the Castle of the Cape of Good Hope (2017), and at the University of Pretoria (2018), and is an awardwinning author of poetry and short fiction.
Symons’s artistic practice engages the tradition of portraiture as a layered and contested archive rather than a fixed representation of identity. His works challenge the notion of the portrait as a complete and permanent record, instead presenting the face as something constructed through processes of accumulation, erasure, and revision.
Working entirely in a digital medium, Symons creates images that echo the visual language of classical painting and illustration. His compositions often draw on the structure and balance of Old Master portraiture, while his painterly surfaces are built through a highly tactile digital process using a pressure-sensitive tablet. Drips, textures, and gestures are rendered with precision, resulting in works that carry the depth and immediacy of physical paint. It is not uncommon for a single image to consist of over 100 layers, each contributing to a complex interplay of colour, texture, and visual depth.
The richly textured surfaces of his works function as visual palimpsests, built up and reworked to reveal traces of earlier stages. This process reflects his interest in the way history is continually rewritten, with the past remaining present through fragments and residues. By referencing classical portrait conventions while simultaneously disrupting them, Symons questions ideas of visibility, memory, and who is remembered.
Through fragmentation and material tension, his work reflects the complexity of identity and historical truth, inviting the viewer to consider the portrait not as a fixed image, but as an evolving record shaped over time.
Stephen Symons is in South Africa exclusively represented by The Artists Gallery in Cape Town and will show 2026 for the first time internationally with The Travelling Art Gallery.
