Artwork Description
Two young boys occupy a vintage 1933 map of the Cape Peninsula in Ocean View by Lisette Forsyth. One sits with his hand raised to his face, while the other stands looking out across False Bay. Behind them, the old map remains wonderfully present, its roads, contours and familiar Cape place names becoming part of the painting itself.
Forsyth’s use of historical maps brings past and present together in a way that feels particularly poignant here. The boys are placed within a landscape mapped long before they were born, yet it is also their landscape, somewhere lived in rather than simply recorded on paper. Their quiet poses leave space for us to wonder what they are looking towards and what this place means to them.
Ocean View is an original painting by South African artist Lisette Forsyth on a vintage Cape Peninsula map dated 1933. It measures 82 × 75 cm, is sold unframed and is available for R56,000.
