Miss South Africa is the specter and the scepter which presides over us (“us” being: gay children in the Garden Route). Like pendulous jewels perched on the crown, the winners glimmer and refract the moment of crowning: tenuously set in the tangled filigree of national discourse.

 Starting as an exercise, ending as an obsession, I have set to painting every titleholder from 1990 (the decade of my birth) onwards. Aiming for somewhere between gesture and ethereal I want these paintings to touch on the sometimes tawdry material reality of this polished ritual: make up wipe shroud of Turin.

 These works seek not to make a value statement but rather, in their effusive alacrity, seek to hold a moment through the illusory nature of figurative painting: disjointed brushstrokes fabulous and fetid.

Miss was a solo presentation at 99 Loop Gallery, in Cape Town in 2021. You can see available works here.