Lore & Legends

Lore & Legends - Stories That Refuse To Disappear

There’s something about living in Africa that teaches you very quickly that not everything can be explained.

Some places hold stories long after the people are gone.

Some rivers carry memory.

Some mountains feel like they are watching you back.

Over the last few months, I’ve found myself painting less from thought and more from instinct. Certain symbols keep appearing. Water. Horses. Female forms. Creatures. Ancient markings. Hidden faces. Landscapes that feel half memory, half dream.

And every time I followed the thread backwards, it led me to folklore.

To the stories whispered around fires.

To the myths passed between generations.

To South African legends that sit somewhere between history, spirituality and warning.

Legends & Lore is a body of work rooted in those stories — but also in the way they still echo through modern life.

The water spirit Nzuzu.

The meaning of Mlungu and the white foam of arriving ships.

The silence surrounding women like Saartjie Baartman.

The mystery of gorges, rivers and landscapes believed to hold spiritual energy long before tourism arrived.

What fascinates me most is how these stories continue to evolve. Folklore was never static. It shifted with every storyteller. Every generation added new fears, new truths, new interpretations.

And maybe that is what art does too.

These works are not literal illustrations of myths. They are emotional translations. Fragments. Echoes. Conversations between the ancient and the modern world.

Some feel playful.

Some unsettling.

Some deeply feminine.

Some like dreams you can’t fully explain after waking.

But all of them come from the same place:

A growing fascination with the invisible threads connecting landscape, ancestry, memory and imagination.

Because perhaps legends were never meant to be proven.

Only felt.

— Bianca Black