The ‘Nation Changers’ is a registered Public Benefit Organization, and the outreach arm of Cityhill Church in Hillcrest, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.

Multiple projects exist to empower and uplift impoverished people in the surrounding communities.

Their motto is that “every life matters”.

During 2020, the ‘Above & Beyond’ Distribution/Development Centre was in the process of being built to impact thousands more, with education, adult literacy classes and storage space for the many tons of food that are distributed to feed the hungry, being at the heart of the organization. Furthermore, storage and retail space for The Clothing Box initiative, through which over 122 entrepeneurs have been empowered to start their own businesses, had become increasingly essential.

I have a heart for the poor, the overlooked and the forgotten, on the fringes of society. After hearing about the launch of ‘Above & Beyond’ I was inspired to offer simply what I had in my hands to give: the ability to paint.  And so it was that I took on the task of painting up individual portraits in oil paint of some of the beautiful people whose lives had been positively impacted by ‘Nation Changers’ as my way of raising funds for this worthy cause.

With no access to art shops during lockdown in 2020, I looked around my studio and, once again, made use of what I had, which happened to be a pile of sheets of mixed media art paper.  To strengthen these paper pieces, she used a process of applying layers of gesso pushed through various stencils, some of them being lettering or numbers, and these added an interesting texture to the surface, whilst at the same time, strengthening the card to provide a strong, sound foundation for the oil paints.

As I began painting each portrait, the symbolic significance of all the layering started to dawn on me.  People on the forgotten fringes of society, with zero literacy levels, often feel like just a number amongst the sad statistics of poverty in third world African countries. So by the simple act of pushing these numbers and alphabet letters into the background through her paintbrushes and paints, it felt as if I was giving these precious people a dignity and sense of recognition and identity that went far beyond how well they could read or write. And so that’s how the title of the Portrait Auction, “NOT JUST A NUMBER” came about!

These 12 portraits went on auction at Talloulah’s in Botha’s hill, KwaZulu-Natal on 26 May 2021 and a wonderful amount of money was raised towards the Above and Beyond project through Nation Changers.