Patterns
The patterns are one of the most important aspects in their communication through painting. The patterns are usually repeated throughout their design with only a very slight variation and different colour choice. The geometric patterns and shape are first drawn with the black outline and later filled in with colour. The patterns are grouped together throughout the walls in terms of their basic design structure. Creating the right tools to allow accuracy and freedom for the wife becomes a difficult task. The tools can't restrict the female painter from creating her art. They have to have tools for the large geometric shapes of flat colour and small brushes for the very small areas, outlines, and sacks. The advancement of tools has allowed faster and more complex designs throughout the Ndebele's homes.
These very simple looking painted houses are really a complex system of tradition and creation. This painted tradition is still alive and as every generation passes it down little changes begin to exist. This is their way of communication and expression through their home. The women work long and hard to finish these walls and are noticed by the outside community because of her individual talent and expression.
Read more about this topic: Ndebele House Painting
Famous quotes containing the word patterns:
“The ninety percent of human experience that does not fit into established narrative patterns falls into oblivion.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?”
—Amy Lowell (1874–1925)
“Phenomenal nature shadows him wherever he goes. Clouds in the staring sky transmit to one another, by means of slow signs, incredibly detailed information regarding him. His inmost thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual alphabet, by darkly gesticulating trees. Pebbles or stains or sunflecks form patterns representing in some awful way messages which he must intercept. Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)