Biography
By Christine Sefolosha

It is a small world where one starts off from, at least it appears this way years later when one looks at the tree which was the first confidante and the garden where so many wild adventures happened. The hedge which was the end of one's planet is really only a few feet tall but that is where so many memories run back to... it was a lonely time but full of dreams and stories invented and told to oneself as one would when one has no siblings and the children in the street are forbidden...they might be too wild or disruptive or simply bring in ideas and open the door....so ants become close friends and snails too, even leaves and branches are welcoming. So often the adults are busy shouting or crying or being upset in the house so it is safer here in the enclosed garden that changes according to seasons.

Yet it is very beautiful on the lakeshore, there are mountains all around and forests. A child's ideal spot to grow healthily and ... peacefully?

At the end of adolescence it was obvious I had to leave and find another way, an escape? Possibly...Discover new grounds certainly and live the many stories that filled me during all these childhood years. I landed in Johannesburg at the end of the seventies. It was South Africa, the stronghold of apartheid but also the overpowering nature, the vast and wild land, the many animals I dreamt about or imagined after seeing them in books, and the black people full of life, dances and songs. It all seemed miraculous and the political regime initially didn’t appear in its most ghastly aspects.

Little by little the mind wandered and realized that there was a very dark side to this Eden. Although the surroundings were so blissfully in tune with my yearnings, I was discovering one step at a time what it meant to be in a repressive regime; how unfair it was to some people and a feeling of not belonging to all this overtook me.

I started attending the black musicians' concerts and lively plays in the only place in Johannesburg where blacks and whites could share their respective expressions. Wonderful music, chants all so meaningful, cries of protests and the intense need to shape the deep frustrations in the face of injustices, to be a people in its own right - all this taught me the essence of being an artist: a deep, uncompromising necessity to express one's inner and outer world. But this had a price and it meant living on the fringe and eventually leave.

Painting primarily, has enabled me to go beneath the surface (which was a far cry from what I initially learnt about art: make a pretty picture, if you stick as closely to reality and distribute colors without going over the line then you will get an A!...) that it can be a testimony of one's underworld; that it can reveal the subterranean, inner images that haunt or puzzle ; my animals could be symbols of currents that shape my conscious reality. I have a strong need to let go of all clean, aseptic, pretty, decorative streaks. It is important to allow what is less controllable to take one over as completely as possible and I would say, almost get into a trance. As a true westerner having no initiation into these realms, putting paint on paper is the closest gate to expressing mysteries and magic in my life.

When something totally unknown, strange and that has yet no name seems to appear before my eyes, I know I can follow it... it will lead me into true awakening.

View the Sefolosha Image Gallery
Order the Limited Edition Catalogue
Read Roger Manley’s essay on Christine Sefolosha
Read Roger Cardinal’s essay: Christina Sefolosha: Painting Wild Beasts