Garth kitching - Landscape Artist Botswana

A Sunday of landscape work.

Some preparation drawing work for two new oils.

Exploring the beauty and interesting experimentation of imperfections and flow. Ink on Bockingford 300gsm.

A piece going to a new home with a friend who is leaving on a new adventure. Go well, Patience! We are going to miss you.

A more significant piece of work. Oils on stretched canvas. 60×40cm

Two small oils off the easel.

Re-imagined. 2013 Enamel/acrylic poured huts now with oil and gold leaf in 2022.

Inks on Daler Rowney Aquafine 300gsm
'Camelthorn Pods'.

I spend months developing artwork concepts that start as questions in my head. This work represents a long experimental journey with inks on paper (Fabriano) to represent Camel thorn pods in a unique, creative way. Now, I will move on to the final works (3 sets x 4 pieces).

A baobab oil to start 2022 creativity journey! Love Botswana life.

During my 15-day recovery from Covid, I looked out from my bed onto the winter trees where a few leaves hung tenaciously. On Day 7, I climbed out of bed and put down what I looked at with enamel. I may have put myself back a day or two with this 20 minute 'pour and drip' technique that I have used on these pieces since 2004, but I captured the essence of the trees that helped me heal. This mixed media piece is called, "Healing at the Kgotla".

Small quick sketches. Playing with media.

Some of the work we (students who choose to attend open classes with me on Friday afternoons) are producing in art classes.

Working on two kgotla pieces! Loving the tiny drops. These remain my favourite Botswana pieces.

'Levi's Song' Oil on canvas.

Botswana moods. Oils in progress on canvas and board.

The last of a series, inspired by the kgotla fences in Botswana that have brought me so much creative satisfaction since 2012. I do think it's time to rest these pieces now. 11 in total, they are all over the world in different homes with these 3 in our home in Sowa for now.

Spaces I. Interpretation of the Makgadikgadi Pans. Oil on Fredrix board.

And it's done! The 1st Lekgotla piece with a pallette of 6 colours. Enamel and oil on stretched canvas.

The complexity of the Lekgotla Series will always keep me engaged as an artist. My most original and challenging pieces of art, each one is a collector's piece. It simply can never be replicated in any way. In progress ...

My first two small oils since my paints and canvases arrived a few days ago. Been a good 6 months since the smells of turps and paint filled the house. So good.

So good to be back in 🇧🇼. Meeting wonderful people and surrounded by salt pans and desert landscapes.

'The Unthinkable Cost of Soup'. Shark finning is an industry that has to be addressed and rationalised. Watercolour (gold leaf) on cold pressed 300gsm paper.

Day 14 of quarantine 2. Freedom today? Last painting of this quarantine called, 'Freedom of Butterflies'. Watercolour and gold leaf highlights.

'"Primum non nocere". ('Above all, do no harm'). The pangolin is believed to be the world's most illegally poached and trafficked mammal. The Covid-19 pandemic is theorised by some experts to have started through eating pangolins. This zoonotic transmission of disease from wild animals to humans is a result of the poaching and selling of wild animals at markets for eating and medicinal purposes. The pangolin is considered a delicacy and its scales used for medicinal or rituals in China, Vietnam and some countries in Africa. As humans, we so often demonstrate a definitive lack of care for our natural world. If the Covid-19 pandemic was started by eating a pangolin, we are paying an exacting and heart- breaking price right now.

We as humans need to learn that, above all, do no harm to each other or our natural world. I'll let the art work and title communicate this message.

Kokerboom. Day 6 of quarantine II. Mixed media. Exploring the richness of watercolour layers with gold leaf.

Preparation sketches for future paintings. Quarantine Botswana Days 4 and 5. Graphite on Fabriano.

'The Last Shark'. The way Covid-19 has highlighted man's abuse of species and the heartache it has caused us in this desperate time. Our hold on the natural world is so entitled. When will we learn? Watercolour and gold leaf.

2014. 'Graffiti Speak' series. Captured graffiti images from in and around Gaborone, photoshopped and gave them a voice. Part of the 2014, 'African Footprint' exhibition.

As I get ready for the next season of my life, some final experimental work with inks, watercolour and good cold pressed paper.

Exploring human characters through mixed media.

Family history matters. Whispers from the past connect you with the past and direct your feet on the journey that lies ahead.

'You can't see what I think, so don't say you know me'. Mixed media on 300gsm cold pressed paper.

Mixed media on 300gsm Bockingford cold pressed.

Playing with golf leaf and a wide range of inks and watercolours. Here are the beginnings of this concept exploration ...

Just put a 2013 piece up on the wall from the Kgotla series. Oil and enamel ... interlocked branches that look like stain glass.

A day of unpacking and repacking the garage where all the art is stored ... all my work in this post. Just three pieces.

So good to be home surrounded by some of the art we own.

Think these two are done. Been a good day of painting. 'Tenacity I and II'. Standing firm and strong when the world reels from a pandemic. Be strong, be courageous, be kind and caring in this time of Covid-19.