#714 The Red Barn

ORIGINAL OIL ON CANVAS: 100cm x 100cm

Available at Manzart Contemporary, Franschhoek

PRINTS ON PAPER; Edition sizes

30cm x 30cm

60cm x 60cm

PRINTS ON CANVAS; Edition sizes

80cm x 80cm

A freshly painted red barn, depicted against a building bank of clouds.

About the Karoo

The Karoo is a semi-desert  of South Africa. The Karoo is partly defined by its landscape, geology, and climate — above all, its low rainfall, arid air, cloudless skies, and extremes of heat and cold. The Karoo also hosted a well-preserved eco-system which is now represented by many fossils.

The Karoo formed an almost solid barrier to the interior from Cape Town, and the early explorers and hunters on the way to the Highveld  denounced it as a fearsome place of great heat, great frosts, great floods and great droughts. Today it is still a place of great heat and frosts, and an yearly rainfall of between 50–250 mm, though on some of the mountains it can be 250–500 mm higher than on the plains. However, underground water is found throughout the Karoo, which can be tapped by boreholes, making sheep farming possible.