Notes

Woman Stamping Mealies is a jewel in Maggie Laubser’s oeuvre of painting figures in the rural landscape going about their daily toil. Laubser portrays the woman carrying a child on her back while stamping the mealies that provide her family with the staple required for their sustenance. With an exquisite vivacity, the artist uses boldly expressionistic blues and gold tones to emphasise the vibrancy of the rhythmic motion of the stamping of the mealies. The artist frames the upper half of the scene with the labourer’s cottage and adds to the familial setting a young boy resting in the shade. Laubser bestows on the work a liveliness, an almost celebratory tone and respect for the humdrum, and this is further augmented by the energetic pecking of the geese shown in striking colours and shapes gathered around the feet of the woman.

Literature

Dalene Marais (1994). Maggie Laubser: Her Paintings, Drawings and Graphics, Johannesburg: Perskor, illustrated in black and white on page 292, catalogue number 1183, and titled Woman at the Pounding Block in Front of a Hut.