Elegie

On the night of the 24th of February 2011, my brother Cornelius Bosch was brutally murdered in his home studio in Kameeldrift Pretoria in South Africa.

My brother was shot in the head and his body was set alight.  He was found in a field nearby his house by a pedestrian.  Only dental records could identify his body.

It was a devastating blow to my family.  It is now a cold case.  No arrests have been made since the six men were released on circumstantial evidence a few weeks after the event.

Juria Le Roux a fellow artist also experienced such a tragedy.  It was the murder of her father’s cousin.  Juria decided to paint a cathartic body of work consisting of fifty portraits in oil, in protest and tribute.  She included my brother in this body of work:

“ELEGIE”. (GUS 2011)/ “REEKSMOORD”  (KKNK 2012)

Elegie (elegy) lament or song for the dead.

The collection was sold to a private collector and the profit donated to a charity organization, hospice in Kenilworth Cape Town.

Juria chose to paint fifty South African murder victims.  It is according to certain sources, the average murder rate per day in our beautiful homeland South Africa.

When you look at the painted faces of the murder victims you see someone with a family, a life, dreams, fears just like yourself.  What a waste of potential of people whose lives were unexpectedly, prematurely ended.  What unrealized treasures were still to be discovered in the potential of these people as living beings?

You are never the same after a intrusive marker event such as this.     The long walk to process trauma takes courage.  The courage lies in the walk.  Personally I enrolled in a masters in Art to help me find a language for this unthinkable thing.  I will talk about the work I had done during that period in a future post.

ELEGIE 2011. Artist: Juria Le Roux