07/07/2025
Silent Auction - Renowned Fibre Artist Kerry Landon - IThemba Craft Art Gallery
EXCERPTS from the opening address by Sue Akerman at the Tatham Gallery, Pietermaritzburg, of Kerry Landon’s recent exhibition, FROM INDIA TO AFRICA.
Kerry was born in India and soon found herself at the age of 7, being sent to Britain to be educated.
Once she had completed school, she lived a somewhat exotic and exciting life, travelling to many countries and places that wet her creative appetite.
She married, and it was only then that she moved to South Africa with family.
These two countries with their interesting cultures and colours, heat and beautiful people carved her into the colourful person that she is. Her work is a mixture of all of this. Her use of colour is extraordinary, and she certainly is not scared of colour.
Kerry was christened Kerala as that was the province of India she was born in. India’s colourful, beautiful people, exotic culture and food, its adorned merchant houses, palaces as well as KwaZulu Natal’s blue and green hills, the sun, abundance of colour and beautiful cloths adorning beautiful people was what she loved and breathed into her creative soul.
It wasn’t until she was approximately in her sixties that she started to paint and make art. Pouring out all that she had drunk in over her life.
She had gathered beautiful fabrics, and roses and butterfly motives, Saris, old embroideries, and crocheted doilies from hospice. Kerry would spend hours cutting motives from once used clothes, Saris and tablecloths. It was these that she embellished the wall hangings with.
I was often asked to dye more crocheted items and lace for her.
Kerry did not love sewing machines. She somehow just felt that machine-sewing was foreign to her and so 90 percent of the stitching is done by hand.
She belonged to a painting group, and a Friday group who worked on any handwork. She loved these two groups. It was in these groups that she found her tribe of like-minded people.
Kerry was plagued in later life with many different problems, and believed that she no longer could make art. We broke that Jinx!
She was driven in the last three years of living in Pietermaritzburg, totally focused on these panels, and pouring all her memories and stories into them. Stitching her happiest moments into each piece and using every bit of energy and fabric to create this body of work.
Returning for a moment to the beauty of being part of an art tribe (people on the same page as yourself). I recommend it to any creative person. In this group of like-minded souls that one can trust, there is a sense of honesty, where honest ways can help you move forward, offer answers and solutions to problems, send you in different directions and in encouraging ways to motivate you to do the possible with the impossible.
Creativity became a place of peace for Kerry. She fine-tuned her skills, tapped into other worlds, and created 29 of these hangings. She had sadness in many areas of her life. With these hangings she was sharing the exotic world around her in which she had lived and not drowning in her sadness.
I do believe that it is imperative to pass on skills to others in life so that we can carry on bridging the gap between left- and right-brained people, in a world where the creative spirit is not left behind, so that we can honour artists of the future and they too can become part of the co-creative process.
We at iThemba CraftArt Gallery would like to join Sue Akerman to honour Kerry Landon and agree with her that this colourful display is a fitting tribute to a strong woman who is sharing her work and inspiring others. And who, through her creativity, found a way of healing her pain.
The iThemba CraftArt Gallery would like to take this opportunity to thank Kerry Landon and Sue Akerman for sharing these exquisite works with us and our Stellenbosch audiences.
