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Realigning algorithm of her life results in MA for artist
Author: Sue Segars
Published: 13/12/2021

​​For Rosemary Lapping-Sellars, a Master's graduate in Visual Arts, the completion of her qualification is a culmination of a lifetime as an artist.

Lapping-Sellars, who completed her qualification over two years, graduated on Monday 13 December at Stellenbosch University's hybrid graduation ceremonies.

Lapping-Sellars' MA, entitled Vulnerability Laid Bare, A Dialogue without Utterance, focuses on the subjective impact of COVID-19 on people's day-to-day existence and on precarious communities. Her practical work will be featured in an exhibition, entitled A Dialogue without Utterance, at the Rust-en-Vrede art gallery and clay museum in Durbanville during January 2022.

Asked how she feels about completing her degree in just two years, Lapping-Sellars responded that “being eighty is no different from being twenty to forty – it's just a number! My life as an honest artmaker was bound into the fabric of a woman who ploughed the fields despite the drought, and who perceived each day as a moment full of potential and opportunity …"

Lapping-Sellars said doing her Master's degree came about as a result of a seminal turning point in her life – when her husband Sean Sellars, Emeritus Professor of Otolaryngology (ENT) at the University of Cape Town (Groote Schuur Hospital), died suddenly in 2019.

“My four children all live overseas, and I was, quite simply, compelled to realign the algorithm in my head. Later that year a friend came to visit and said quite bluntly, 'You have no choice but to rethink your life, go back to study – do your Master's – it will be marvellous for you'."

Inspiration

The rest is history. Lapping-Sellars' MA was, in her words, “deeply influenced by COVID-19. It has been a creative endeavour to trap the sensation of profound vulnerability in an art medium and to portray sensation in the form of gesture and expression, giving silent voice to such sentiment as a form of language," she wrote in her introduction. 

The body of work in her MA comprises three categories – a collection of ceramic figures depicting people seeking refuge, entitled “Times of Despair"; a series of artworks inspired by daily bulletins and news, entitled “Dispatch"; and a collection of ceramic vessels, depicting the libation vessels used during sacrificial rituals to call on higher powers, entitled “Reflection".

“The term Liminality permeates the work, it is used by way of implication to describe a feeling between one and another; an ephemeral sensation conveyed from maker to viewer via the artwork," Lapping-Sellars said.

Life journey

In a lifetime committed to art and ceramics, Lapping-Sellars obtained a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts and Psychology from the then Natal University, after which she took up a teaching post as head of the ceramic department at the then Port Elizabeth Technikon. A year later she returned to her hometown of Pretoria to open a child art studio. She lived in France for two years and for a period of time taught art at the NATO base in Fontainebleau. She now lives in Cape Town.

 

Lapping-Sellars completed an honours degree in Fine Arts through UNISA in 1985. She worked as the associate editor of the magazine for the Ceramics Association of South Africa, a position which enabled her to “write about the medium of clay as a bona fide art medium". She visited the studios of the top ceramists in Britain, “bringing back a whole new aesthetic to the somewhat traditional work that was being produced here in South Africa" and gave lectures which, she believes, led to a fresh way of looking at fired clay in this country. 

In 1983, Lapping-Sellars started the ceramic department at Herschel School and grew it to an operation which had 140 students. She and her husband lived in Ireland for six years, from 1999, where she completed a correspondence course at the Opus School of Textiles, leading to her exhibiting in London with the school in 2004.

On her return to Cape Town in 2006, she opened a multimedia teaching studio for adults which she ran until 2016. 

In the interview, Lapping-Sellars paid warm tribute to her supervisor, Prof Elizabeth Gunter, saying she had a “remarkable" influence on her work. “She evoked a new response in me. She was the wind behind my sails. In fact, the whole experience at Stellenbosch University was wonderful." 

Reflecting on her artistic life, Lapping-Sellars said: “My artmaking compulsion is embedded in my soul and for the duration of my adult life, I have had the joy of making art, having a studio – more specifically a ceramic studio – where I could be creative, teach my skills and exhibit my work." 

Asked what is next for her, Lapping-Sellars said: “I will continue to work in my studio and teach and travel and perhaps write a book."

 Photographer: Stefan Els