What I like about rock art, is that it is found all over Southern Africa, painted or engraved leaving evidence of the whereabouts of these artists of old. The following concerns the paintings by the San or Bushmen peoples of Southern Africa.

I agree with Jane Taylor and Laurens van der Post, in “Testament to the Bushmen”, that although ‘People have been at pains to identify different styles, and even individual artists; … to me, far more astonishing than the differences, is the homogeneity of the art over such a vast geographical area and over such an extended time-span.’

We have pallets, brushes, sponges and paints, we use spray paints in a can, our fingers and various other mediums to create an artwork, there are two recording I know about of Bushmen who carried long horn paint pots around their waist.  No two colours were alike and each had a marked difference fro the rest. Reeds and bird feathers were reportedly used, as were hollow bones tapering at the end and wildebeest tail hairs bound together.

The medium on which the Bushmen painted was rock – most sedimentary, they painting was done on a rock, which was porous enough to absorb the pigment bur smooth enough to work upon.   It is said that the red pigment was made from red ochre mixed with various other iron oxides – haematite, which was heated and then ground into a fine powder.  Black was made from the charcoal of burnt sticks and white was a mixture of clay and plant sap, however berries, bone marrow, blood, animal fat, roots and soil have also been used.  Yellows and other earthy colours can be found in sedimentary stones cracked in half.  The rock art painters were truly talented, using what they had around them – they used.

When you visit the various sights you will see what I mean when I say – these people are the only artists to truly capture the Eland antelope in an almost revered state.

The way the Eland is painted seems to have been done with special attention and care and the paintings of Eland are numerous and well defined as opposed to the other animal paintings.

Elongated human figures are not well understood as some say they represent the Bushmen’s sense of spiritual value, others say they are medicine men in trance and it is this sort of conflict that intrigues me to find out about an unexplained art.

They say Van Gogh painted over many of his originals – it would be interesting to find out how many artists actually do that!  The rock art I have observed where this is found is usually a painting of an Eland over other Eland, or over other animals and figures – could these paintings of Eland superimposed over human and animal figures emphasize the link between Bushmen and Eland?  You decide when you see the rock art in the mountains of the Drakensberg or the hills of the Waterberg and by the time you venture into the other regions of Southern Africa – perhaps you too will have your own artistic explanation.

There are some accounts of bushman rock art that look very different to the generic look but have been painted with a similar paint and has weathered in a similar way to the rock art I so admire.  I wonder if this could be the painting by offspring of intermarriage between Bushmen and the native tribes that descended into Southern Africa? Marion Walsham How said she met an old man in 1930, who was one of the many sons of Moorosi, a great Sotho chief.  He told her that he and his half-brothers who had Bushmen blood in them used to paint at one end of a cave, while the purebred Bushmen painted at the other end.  Could this be an answer to the poorer quality of art I have come across?  You will note from some of the pictures I have captured the more amateurish art.