Bryan

It is Sunday evening, dusk-ish; I’m alone and the power is out here in Cape Town. The thoughts that are going through my mind is themed around loneliness, death and mourning. I’m a Scorpio – if you know, you know…

I’m wondering if we’ve become too eager to move on with life that we’ve become unable to mourn, or are we so adept at the mourning that we move on too easily?

A friend of mine recently died; I don’t know how as I don’t find that important – his incarnation ended and what he’s become to those around him simply stopped being. I believe in life beyond death, but I fear that has, at least to some extent made me blind to the significance of passing on.

Ironically I think of death often. Actually a lot of my work that I don’t show to the public is portraits of passed on loved ones. It is work that I always get accidentally – how would one advertise for painting portraits in memoriam..?

When I do these portraits it’s like visiting with that person. Sometimes, if I know the person it is quite an enjoyable visit. If I didn’t know the person myself it’s like getting to know a new friend and I often get stories about what their lives may have been pop up in my mind. Sometimes these portraits inspire poetry:

I have to paint you gone,

But there’s forever in your eyes.

How do I trace your no tomorrows

And draw the lacked goodbyes?

How do I wash your joys and sorrows

Into the history they blend?

How do I erase the end?

I’ll try to paint the hopes I see

And all the things you’d dream to do and be.

I’ll paint you free;

Happier than ever.

I’ll paint you forever.

-memento mori II

2017; Barend Paul Barnard

#poetry #gedigte

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The portrait herewith is of Bryan Ramkilawan. I haven’t been this shocked about someone passing in my life; it’s just unimaginable that such a mythical creature that Bryan is no longer with us.

He was my lecturer when I studied fashion design at CPUT, later we worked together on a project that I can’t exactly remember and even later still – around 2011 – he suggested I take over the classes he taught at CPUT when he started working full time as the front man of Cape Town Fashion Council (I did).

Bryan connected people; few came in contact with him that he didn’t know where they belong or where they should be working toward – or where they could find what they were looking for. Creative inspiration and growth is one of a Leo’s greater gifts and Bryan embodied this effortlessly.

Soon after I started my art career Bryan contacted me to do a portrait, but we never got to it. Life gets busy. Life gets so busy…

Goodbye Bryan, it was an honor knowing you and being one of the many, many people who’s life you improved.