Notes

Red Earth Pangolin

Raw red earth

crusting

precious scales

Copper claws

create

a fibonacci spiral

Curved creature

embracing

the world.

– Lin Barrie

Lin Barrie is an artist, writer and conservationist who has a diploma in Fine Art from Durban Art College. She lives in the Save Valley Conservancy in the south-east of Zimbabwe, which is home to endangered black and white rhinos, wild dogs, elephants, buffalo, lion, and pangolin. She immerses herself in her subjects – the wheeling constellations and moon phases of the night skies, the people, the droughts, veld fires and regenerating rains of Africa. “As an African (who herded cattle during school holidays at my grandparents’ homestead), I inherently knew how to be still and behold the atmosphere of nature,” she says. The present lot is inspired by the Fibonacci spiral. She describes a pangolin as being “a clawed termite connoisseur, a creature of the earth, living in the earth, digging in the earth, often coated in earth and angry ants”. Real red earth features in this painting, as encrusted pangolin scales. Lin Barrie’s work is in various collections in South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Australia, Europe, Canada and the United States of America.