O.W.Stopforth

Oscar William Stopforth

An artist of Images from the Rocks.

Oscar was born in South Africa in 1934. 

At an early age he started to sketch & paint. 

Art became a medium to express his fertile imagination. 

Walter Battiss, one of South Africa’s most creative artists, encouraged his talent & also taught him an appreciation of Bushman Rock Art. 

This appreciation turned into intrigue for Oscar who is fascinated by the skill of these early artists of the rock. Simple lines & limited colour was used by the Bushmen to express a vast range of activities & images both mundane & spiritual. He greatly admires the creativity of these artists & has spent the past twenty-five years visiting & photographing rock art sites in South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe & Lesotho. 

He talks of the great excitement & thrill, which he experiences whenever he sees rock art. The photographs that he takes provide source material for Oscar’s creativity. 

After careful study of the images on the rocks, he composes & paints pictures that are new & fresh, that shows imagination & skill & are interesting & appealing to the viewer.

Bushman art reflects an ancient way of life that is difficult for us to understand. Journeys into “the other world” are undertaken to evoke the support of spirits in an attempt to influence uncertainties such as drought & sickness. Shamans in the group, induce a state of trance enabling them to interact with hallucinatory spirit like beings. 

A feeling of weightlessness is experienced & the shaman, often transformed into a half human-animal (therianthrope) being, is able to journey to “distant places”. This phenomenon is reflected in the Bushman art & Oscar views this art, not so much from the intellectual or even aesthetic aspect but relies on his intuition to provide his own spirituality to his work, that is so strongly influenced by the art of the rocks.

This artist is versatile in his use of medium & he paints in watercolour, pastels & oil. His linocut are lively & decorative. He uses oil paint for his larger sometimes-monumental works & watercolour for smaller, more delicate paintings.