Ennie Coex'ae Bob

Ennie Coex'ae Bob was born in the 1940's. Ennie Coe'xae Bob grew up within a caring family, strongly rooted in the traditions and beliefs of the Kalahari San. She's never attended school and is a respected member of her community with people often coming to her for advice (she is mother to eight). Her knowledge about edible and medicinal plants is well known.

Ennie is a skilled craft producer and although she now concentrates on her printmaking and painting, she still enjoys making belts, necklaces and bracelets from glass and ostrich eggshell beads. Her love for the designs in traditional San outfits had found an outlet in her art where she often depicts women with colourful clothing and accessories.

Ennie joined the Kuru Art Project in 1994 and her painting style developed rapidly. Her enjoyment of the creative process conveys itself through her work, which is often light hearted and fun.

The things she remembers most vividly from her childhood are the trips made with her grandparents into the veld to collect veldfood and to hunt. Like most of the other Kuru artists, she has a need to show some of these memories in her art in order to keep them alive.

Unlike the other women artists at the Kuru Art Project, Ennie also likes to depict animals. She passionately loves the Kalahari veld with all its creatures. Thus creatures like wild dogs, with their red tongues and spotted bodies, the owls and insects like the praying mantises appear in her work. For her the creative process is more important than the final product. In this way a bird can easily be transformed into a plant and vice versa. It could be this complete absorption in her work that results in a looser paint technique, different from the more linear work of the other Kuru artists.

The Kuru Art project

Artists

Lithographs 2006