Notes

The garden chairs prefigure my interest in woven wire and mesh-like constructions which became a signature of my sculptural explorations in later years. I did the drawings in 1980 while in my third year of study towards the BA Fine Arts degree at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg. Jinny Heath was our drawing lecturer and she encouraged us to draw from our surroundings. I decided to base the drawings on a view from my parental home in Melmoth. The first drawing shows a view of our garden furniture on the verandah with the roof trusses showing above in the top of the composition. The view beyond the garden fence, wire mesh again, shows the Melmoth municipal dam at the foot of the hills. The second drawing is of another set of garden chairs placed in front of a wall with a wisteria creeper and some ferns, and again, the view of the dam and hills beyond. I have always enjoyed a slowly evolving approach to making things, which also comes across in my repetitive and fastidious mark-making in the drawings. Walter Oltmann

Exhibited

Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, Walter Oltmann - In the Weave, 28 January 2014-29 March 2014.

Literature

Neil Dundas and Julia Charlton (eds.) (2013). Walter Oltmann – In the Weave, Johannesburg: Standard Bank Gallery and Goodman Gallery. Illustrated in colour on page 18.