Komani expert to rock on CNN
Well-known artist to show rock art secrets on TV documentary
A KOMANI man who has made a lifelong study of rock art and primitive paint-making, Stephen Townley Bassett, will appear in a documentary television programme to be screened on CNN several times later this month.
Having lost his father at a very young age, Steve was influenced by his grandfather and particularly his uncle Ginger Townley Johnson, who took the young Steve on many an adventure in the Cedarberg Mountains looking for rock paintings. In 1980, he wrote
After school, Steve obtained a degree in economics and psychology, “but I never felt I was in the right place” until 25 years ago when he gave that all up to fulfil his passion for what we commonly know as Bushman paintings.
No one knew, for example, what they used as paint and what they had put into it to enabled it to endure exposure to the elements for centuries. No “tool kit” has ever been recovered in any archeological dig in South Africa to give clues to the instruments and materials they employed, so Steve began to experiment.
Of course those ancient artists only had access to natural products, so it came down to animal fat, blood, bone marrow, aloe juice, egg and natural pigments such as ochre and working out how they reacted to various elements like fire. Also, they could hardly nip down to the nearest art shop to buy brushes, so this involved more creative thinking.
CNN, based in Atlanta, Georgia decided on a programme investigating the need of humans to put down lasting images for whatever reason.
Steve has spoken on the subject of rock art at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC, where there is a permanent display and running video of his work at the rock art institute at Wits University and he has made many replicas or documentary paintings of various works that are spread around the world.
He has also produced three books on the subject, so he was a natural choice to demonstrate what he is so passionate about.
These replicas done on canvas but using only natural paints and pigments, are exact copies to the millimetre of the original paintings.
“Many landowners ask me to make these copies for them to keep before they disappear as a result of natural weathering or – heaven forbid – vandalism.
“Many hunters, especially from the US, also commission me to do paintings in this way of the animals they have shot, sometimes incorporating the blood of the animal or the hunter or a mixture of the two, signifying the symbolic connection,” he said.
The film crew spent two days with Steve at the end of May when he took them to a rock art site on the Strettons’ farm, Buffelsfontein in the Stormberg, of a leaping lion among cattle. In the studio, they filmed how he had documented that scene on canvas and how he made paint. Afterwards, they went out to a site at the Kemps’ farm in the Cathcart area where he made a fire and showed how he made paints, heating powdered yellow ochre to change it to red.
A committee is now checking that the footage is factually correct and it will be edited in Atlanta. The half-hour programme
containing this documentary will be screened on the CNN channel on July 15 at 5.30pm, the next day at 5.30am, 11.30am and 6.30pm, on July 17 at 4.30am, July 19 at 9.30am and July 21 at 4.30am.
Don’t miss a bit of “local is lekker” on a wider stage.