Extraction Abstraction (South Africa)

This painting is from a recent series, Extraction Abstractions, which critiques a world view that sees nature as a commodity for making profit. The paintings in the series appear to be purely abstract — compositions of colour, rhythmic brushstroke, glazing and other textures — but their titles allude to their actual sources: they closely reference British Empire extraction maps from 1938, which show where to extract natural resources, such as iron, tobacco, copper etc. The paintings are a way of transforming these extractionist charts into something more poetic, spacious and undefinable - mining the extraction maps for the sake of art.