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A series of paintings that were inspired by A Midsummer Night's Dream fancy dress party, set on the idyllic farm in the Natal foothills of Ixopo. The farm Olivar was a place where I spent many holidays with my two closest friends, sisters Lindi and Cally. A Midsummer Night's Dream contains some wonderfully lyrical expressions of lighter Shakespearean themes, most notably those of love, dreams, and the stuff of both, the creative imagination itself. The scene was set, friends had travelled from far and wide to celebrate Cally’s birthday. Everyone had gone to great lengths to dress for their role as Hermia, Lysander, Helena, Demetrius, Puck, Bottom or Robin Goodfellow, not to mention the host of impish fairies who had come to dance in the enchanted woods of Olivar farm.  I used up roles of film the night of the party and there was so much photographic material to work with for series of paintings. I wanted to look past the frivolity of the night and capture those darker tones that I often feel at a party, those moments that you only glimpse through the exuberance of the night. I had a number of images depicting friends that had been caught off-guard, startled, before they had time to smile for the camera. I wanted to show the denseness of the night sky, the kind of darkness you only experience in the country, far away from city lights. This theme of darkness, things that are hidden, was a strong symbolic narrative in my work. It speaks of a time when our homeland was emerging from the clutches of Apartheid.