ENVER LARNEY

Biography

Enver Larney was was born in Cape Town during the reign of apartheid South Africa in the fifties

His twenty years in exile were spent under Nelson Mandela's African National Congress and with the assumption of government, was destined through a diplomatic assignment to engage with the world. Having painted since his youth, Mandela agreed that his work should reach an audience beyond his homeland

He studied at the Michaelis School of Fine Art University of Cape Town and left South Africa in the early seventies for Europe. Here, as guest of the Belgian government, continued his political activity with exhibitions around the world. During the late seventies, Larney migrated to Australia where he was assigned to the ANC mission in Sydney

Deeply committed to the environment and the threat that it faces globally, Larney's Impressions of our World, hopes to raise an awareness. He has travelled extensively for many years and through his canvases offer a candid snapshot of our mother ship

"The earth gets bigger every time that I circle it"

We all have a sense of belonging and nature is our common home

Early years in Cape Town

The Cape of Storms

Our move to Bridgetown on the Cape Flats after the South African government had declared the house in which I was born at Rondebosch a whites only area, must certainly have happened in the heart of winter. The red clay roads were running like rivers and it was probably the first time that I had seen so many trees. This was my introduction to the earth as a companion, the colours of the rainbow and the beginning of all my travels

Cape Town is one of the oldest mariner cities of the world. District Six nestled on the slopes of Table Mountain which drops into the ocean. From here, Antarctica lay naked to the south and the roaring forties begin its turbulent journey in the longest stretch of direct open ocean on earth. Finally slamming into the west Tasmanian coast on the other side of the globe. For hundreds of years, from the earliest Dutch and Portuguese ships, seafarers have anchored here sheltering from the fierce currents that batter the end of Africa

My great grandmother's house nestled among others at District Six. We visited every summer. Smells of close living, and exotic Malaysian food, cakes and delicacies formed the DNA of a community that had grown used to the sea and its unpredictable nature

District Six was bulldozed from the face of the earth like a tidal wave by the previous government. Its citizens cast across the Cape Flats like confetti

The rains in Bridgetown however, continued unabated throughout my early years there. Mexican ivy is a vine that grows throughout the world. Its bright purple flowers found wherever there is soil and water. This was the first flower that I ever noticed in my life. Years later, realizing the importance of this colour when I first saw Claude Monet's Creuse river paintings in the northwest of Paris. Among the purple loon of art genres, impressionism, this became known as the unsuspecting colour in nature, given that the human iris cannot discern ultra violet. In its dance with bright green, the magic of Monet's Creuse river paintings as well as his later Water Lily series come to life in colourful conversation

The colours of the rainbow came courtesy of the indigenous lantana bush, growing proudly as a weed all over the world. Little pods consisting of a myriad of coloured blossoms that dazzle with every strand of the spectrum

Bridgetown with all its rain, mud and newly felled trees served up a palette of colour and social circumstances that seemed to prepare itself for the fiercest political chapter South Africa was entering. Clouds of revolution were gathering like a storm at sea, but groundwork for political reform had already been laid since 1912 and our good fortune lay in the wisdom of Mandela

History raised the flag of a rainbow nation to the world

IMPRESSIONS OF OUR EARTH

One of the most significant exponents of impressionism in the world today, Enver Larney prides himself in the ability to work en plein air and in situ. In this way he has created oils on canvas across the continents of the world for the past few decades

He paints light. The great debate on he Montmartre in Paris during the mid nineteenth century when an emerging impressionist movement sought independence from the classics, was to find a way of painting through the magic window. Painting a canvas in one sitting in the open and using sunlight as medium. However, very few painters achieved this ability except Alfred Sisley, Vincent van Gogh, Berthe Morisot, Paul Cezanne, Camille Pissarro et al. Claude Monet painted wet on dry, returning to the same canvas when conditions permitted and Renoir, Degas, Manet and a host of other painters made use of photographic aids, or as in the case of Boudin, the earliest of the en plein air painters in France, painted figures in the studio seated on chairs, inserting them onto canvases which were prepared in the open. Most contemporary works of all genres are executed with the aid of pre-existing material or painstakingly beautified in the studio for the benefit of clientele

Impressionism has freed itself from this constraint

Larney,s paintings are a collectors dream. Each one is a member of a family of works that reflect the world in which we live. The "Essential" Larney is imbedded in gravure in the wet canvas in order to dry for prosperity. Reflected by his passionate style, disciplined commitment and perseverance to appreciate every scene in its own right. Yet each painting is distinguished by settings that are literally world's apart

His works adorn the finest private galleries and collections. After more than forty one man shows around the world since 1972, they include the Chase Manhattan Bank New York, Musee d'Affiche Paris, Frans Masereel Sentrum Belgium and private collectors in the USA, Canada, Europe, South Africa, Australia and the Arabian Peninsula

Media

Yet the painting titled " Asseneda" Flanders in Belgium evokes visions of the French masters, so apt are the colours, almost having been lifted out of a historic publication. As they say, " It's the light, you know"

GALLERY WATCH with Joerg Andersch The Hobart Mercury May 26th 1998 Australia

The most striking thing about Enver Larney's paintings - apart from their stunning and captivating beauty - is their similarity to those of Vincent van Gogh. The colours jump at you, but instead of yellow, van Gogh's famous colour of life, Larney captivates you with blue

SUNDAY CULTURE Bennie Bunsee The Sunday Independent November 7th 1999 South Africa

Like the reconciliation process in South Africa, impressionism also offers similar resolve albeit in a visual manner. The ancient culture of Arabia and the magnificence that lies barely visible beyond these dunes here lures him like a curious child

THE GULF TODAY Rajeev Nair Dubai Thursday June 27th 2002

Web site www.enver.net Email enver@enver.net