Protea Nitida (Grounded series) 600x650mm

“Nitida” is the Latin word for “shine.”

The Waboom Protea (Protea nitida) is a strong and enduring symbol within South Africa’s fynbos landscape along the southern coast. With its broad blue-grey leaves, striking blooms, and sturdy woody form, it reflects both beauty and resilience.

Deeply rooted in our history, it was once used for firewood, furniture, wagon parts, and even ink – its leaves boiled with sugar and a rusty nail to create a writing medium for our ancestors. Also known as the sugarbush, it echoes the beloved Afrikaans folk song, “Suikerbos, ek wil jou hê.”

Like all fynbos, Protea nitida thrives in harsh conditions – wind, drought, poor soil, and fire. It adapts, endures, and regenerates, resprouting after fire and releasing seeds carried by the wind.

Uniquely, it holds both past and present: fresh blooms alongside the dried flower heads of previous seasons, standing like quiet reminders of time gone by.

This artwork is part of my Grounded series:

Grounded marks my return to sea level after the extraordinary weeks spent on top of Table Mountain during Art on the Mountain. Even though I’m back in my familiar studio, I feel as though the mountain has followed me home. Its stillness, its weathered presence, and the quiet strength of its fynbos have settled deeply into my way of looking – and painting.

In this new series, I continue to explore the plants that captivated me on the mountain, but now, I am seeing them through a different lens. Up there, surrounded by wind, rock and sky, these plants felt heroic – tenacious little anchors clinging to ancient sandstone. Back here on the ground, they feel intimate and familiar, like old friends I’ve carried home with me.

This series will accompany me from 2025 into 2026 – a gentle, steady continuation of what the mountain began. Grounded is about allowing those mountaintop insights to settle, deepen and take root. It is a reminder to stay connected to the earth beneath my feet, to my own rhythms, and to the quiet and patience of the fynbos.

I am often humbled by the beauty and complexity of the natural world, and I cannot help but feel gratitude toward the One who imagined this landscape into being. In painting these plants, I hope to honour that creativity with my own.

Working once again in my studio gives me the chance to slow down and translate altitude into clarity. Grounded is both a return and a beginning: a way of rooting the energy of the mountain into the year ahead, and letting it grow into something new.