The orange field before us, Namaqua National Park, September 2016
There were millions of them swaying on long slender stalks in the wind. They were called glans-ogies (or shining-eyes) and differed only in minuscule ways from the buttercups, beetle daisies or Namaqualand daisies which we discovered later on during our trip. At that stage, they were just orange daisies, to us. But something changed for them and that is what I want to write about.
The heat of that early spring day, when we hiked along fields of colour, was intense and the sun drenched the very colour out of all of us. But we bravely battled the light with our aperture and exposure settings as we aimed our lenses at the daisies around us and then we found them, the ones hidden under our shadows and within moments all kinds of contrasts broke out, right in front of us.
We stepped into a world where orange glowed deep and bright and darkness withdrew from light to be by itself.
Long afterwards that moment still lingered unresolved for me. How could the presence of such a large dominant dark area manifest color in such a majestic way? Back home, I had to test this theory on my pots. I chose yellow to be my small color patch. I placed it in a sunny field and then I hid it in the darkest shade.
Selfie of us, 28 x 15 cm on porcelain, R 1200.
The outcome was the same. Yellow stood up out of the darkness and smiled her big smile at me.
