Working The Ground

'“Outsider artist” is a term often given to creatives who seem a little strange to the rest of us. They are sometimes described as troubled, or as people with “issues.” But really, who doesn’t have issues?

Some people endure extraordinary pain in life, more than most. Often they are deeply feeling individuals who create imaginary worlds to live in, places that help them cope with what life throws at them. Those inner worlds can make life bearable.

One such artist, Nukain Mabusa, was the subject of an earlier blog post. My fascination with outsider artists is perhaps heightened because my father was one.

My dad, Willem Johannes Stephanus Bosch, was a potter by trade in his youth. He was also a gay man living in a time when survival meant staying firmly in the closet. When life became too heavy, he moved to the country onto a piece of land owned by my middle brother Willie. There he focused his energy on developing my brother’s smallholding. My dad’s partner lived in another city, so their relationship had to continue in its own way, across distance.

My brother Willie helped my dad finish the exterior of his mud cottage. To create a beautiful surface on the walls, yellow ochre oxide was mixed with boiler plaster, a paper cement. Willie supplied all the materials. He later became known, affectionately, as the “godfather of cement.” Sadly, he passed away unexpectedly in 2018 at only 61. What a loss.

A local carpenter built the furniture for dad’s cottage, and a large vegetable garden grew along one side of the dwelling. But perhaps the most remarkable part of the story is the eighty trees my father planted on that rugged property while he was already in his sixties.

The land was unforgiving. In South Africa we call it ’rooi grond’- red soil, rich with iron, the colour of rust. Digging into it is almost like digging into rock. Still, my father dug and dug. Year after year he planted trees until, slowly, a plantation of Fever trees began to emerge.

The Fever tree is found across Eastern and Southern Africa. It can grow to around twenty-five metres tall. My favourite thing about it is the luminous green trunk. Its spreading branches carry thorns up to seven centimetres long, and its fine feathery leaves allow sunlight to filter gently through the open canopy.

Fifteen years after planting those trees, my father died of cancer at the age of seventy-five.

I don’t consider myself an outsider artist, but when I look at my father’s story I notice certain similarities in our behaviour. You may know from previous posts that I have experienced my share of loss. In my youth I lost a child midway through pregnancy. My father died when I was in my early forties, and a few years later my eldest brother, Cornelius, was murdered. My mother lived with dementia for ten years before passing away at the age of ninety-three. During her illness my middle brother died suddenly and unexpectedly.

So much loss has passed through my life that I sometimes find myself quietly accepting being the one who remains. The burden has lifted in some strange way. This post is not about recounting grief, but I do think these experiences shape the way we move through the world.

In my mid-fifties my husband and I bought an unusually steep piece of land on the Mornington Peninsula. It was steep enough that the price was within reach. Starry-eyed, we bought it after selling our mud-brick home in Eltham, Victoria, where we had lived for twelve years.

We became owner-builders. My husband constructed the structural elements, including the retaining walls, while I took on the garden. Gardening is in my blood, my father taught me what I know. Over five years I slowly planted and weeded the entire block myself. Thankfully I survived the process without serious injury.

One particular weed caused endless trouble: bridal creeper, originally from my birth country, South Africa. It spreads through stubborn underground rhizomes and can take years to eradicate. Our block was heavily infested with it, as much of the land around us in Blairgowrie still is.

Little by little the garden began to take shape. I planted a small forest of Moonah trees, indigenous to this coastal landscape, along with several other native species.

Below:

Pic.1- dad with his pet goat Stanley and my brother’s Labrador Ginger.

Pic.2- dad’s mud cottage

Pic.3- dad in his veggie garden

Pic.4- Fever tree close up - that gorgeous green!

Pic.5- Road by the Fever tree