Throughout my time in Limpopo, I kept a diary. I wrote while crouched against thorned trees at dawn, while watching giraffes tower over the bush, and while walking along the tracks of an ostrich, amazed at how a bird could have such large feet. I thought often of the deep connections people have made with the land across generations — something that Laurel Holmes captures with quiet strength in her work in this collection. Her fascination with trees is not just aesthetic but historical, spiritual, and ecological. In her research, she uncovered the role trees have played as communal anchors in South African life. “There’s always a big tree that is preserved,” she explains. “That’s where meetings would happen, where the community would gather.”

In a parallel way, Nkosinathi’s paintings reveal the layered memory of land and place, using old maps as both muse and material. His landscapes are not simply depictions of terrain — they are remembered, reconstructed, and reimagined scenes that blend geography with history and personal reflection. By lifting text and lines from maps and layering them into his compositions, Nkosinathi invites us to consider how movement, migration, and memory are etched into every inch of land — and into ourselves. His paintings become tactile records of societal shifts and deeply personal journeys, where past and present blur and spaces become shared — between his memory and ours. In his work, just like in the bush, nothing is static — everything is unfolding, connected, and alive.

I was told on this trip, “Life is 10% living, and 90% learning.” One may be able to experience land on its own merit, but to understand the land you must look to the people. The Spring 2025 Collection, Inside Africa, is a conversation between the visitor and the native, the outsider and the insider. This collection is not just about observation — it’s about listening. Stall Three Studio is proud to feature two contemporary South African artists to contribute their lifelong narrative alongside an American artist’s passing narrative, because no place can be understood without the voices of those who know it intimately, through time, experience, and deep-rooted knowledge.

This collection of over 25 diverse works includes a realistic oil painter's reflection on the stillness and silence of the bush, an abstract expressionist’s richly textured fabric pieces layered with the memories and inner landscapes of South Africa, and a printmaker’s deeply symbolic replication of African trees, offering a quiet reflection on their enduring role in human life. At the heart of each piece is a shared vision: the pursuit of beauty. Beauty that persists through histories of hardship. Beauty in the rootedness of nature. Beauty in small, unguarded moments — noticed, remembered, and honored by an open heart.

The contemporary art collection is complimented by an assembly of hand selected African antiques, to continue the narrative of diverse perspectives, offering a conversation between old and new art. The warmth of the antiques offer a balance to the contemporary art, where both teach us how to appreciate the other.