Artist's work shows her vigour and spirit

It's been been a long journey for artist Sorrel Hofmann. Beginning with graphic design and later working in the print media and the world of advertising, Hofmann only returned to fine art rather late when pursuing her studies at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2009.

Although sculpture intrigued her, she focused on painting and has since then passionately involved herself.

In conversation, it became clear that she has a special energy and that would make sense in her working method.

Flitting from one painting or drawing to the next, one senses her vigour and spirit.

Her research as an artist has taken her to desert areas in the African Sahara, to Morocco and closer to home, the Kalahari. Her interest involves the plight of women on the continent and the patriarchal societies there, as well as environmental concerns.

Her own experience having strong female role models growing up has inspired her to seek the same strength wherever she finds herself. Her investigations include copious notes, drawings and readings that then filter through in her paintings.

Her recent exhibition at the Irma Stern Museum explored such experiences and revealed her courageous travels in the Sahara and her ability to translate the sights and sounds of such spaces and places in her various interventions - images that encode an attempt to record such places, as well as a kind of abstract account of her thoughts and feelings around such experiences.

I found it particularly interesting when Sorrel described to me how she collects sand from various parts of the land, takes rubbings of various textures that abound, collects rocks and the like - what she describes as the living matter of things.

Her travels have also taken her to various parts of the Middle East. Drawing from this, the artist will be presenting a series of works at Eclectica Contemporary from June 1 to July 7. The exhibition has the provocative title Rape, which as the artist explains refers to several things, a concept that relates to physical and psychological violence regarding both sexes and the environment itself.

The central piece is an installation with smallish works ordered in rows of three by 18 and otalling 72. Eighteen in Kabbalistic terms refers to the concept of “life” as she describes further and encapsulates her primary objectives. That is, her intimate drawings inspire the viewer to sense the dynamic spirit in things; the sanctity of life itself.

For surely it is only with such reverence that violence will be stopped in its tracks, it is only then that the soul within things or material shall be sensed.

And her drawings of nature trace such a journey. As if with heightened awareness and attunement to the environment, one would not get lost in the desert (literally and metaphorically), a kind of spiritual presence within the vast expanse of desert, unencumbered by city life and pollution.

It is then that the body-mind can navigate the terrain as one tracks one's own footsteps even as the wind changes the space as time ebbs forward.

Her art reveals a kind of figurative spirit to organic matter, and a careful attunement when she is back in her studio to the very materials used to create. Such sensitivity involves the memory of looking and being and then - as she hopes - the viewer through observation can then retrace her steps.