LP 006 The Wait Carried

This painting began life as a young mother carrying her baby while working in the fields. But as the painting developed, her posture grew heavier, her pace slower, and without consciously intending it, she became an older woman.

A few days earlier, I had found myself in conversation with a recently retired prosecutor from the Eastern Cape. He struck me as a quietly thoughtful, deeply compassionate man whose commitment to serving his community remained undiminished after a lifetime in the justice system. Rather than speaking about corruption or high-profile cases, he described the quieter realities of rural life—people walking for days to reach a courthouse, only to be turned away because the electricity had failed or the equipment wasn't working. The conversation stayed with me and, somewhere along the way, quietly found its place in this painting.

For me, the child on her back became symbolic of something more than physical weight. It came to represent the many waits so often carried by women in rural communities: waiting for justice, waiting for money, waiting for transport, waiting at clinics, waiting for work, waiting for change.