Cape Town Series

Although still based in Pietermaritzburg, Leda returned often to Cape Town, the city of her childhood. Over time, these visits became increasingly important to her.

During these journeys, she began producing the body of work that became known as the ‘Cape Town Series’. The works, made across the 1990’s, depict places in and around the city that had meaning for her.

Among them are Long Street, with its older buildings and changing street life, and the Cape Malay Quarter, now Bo-Kaap, with its distinctive houses and strong sense of place. The Lenox Hotel, where she often stayed, also appears and belongs to her memory of an older Cape Town.

Lions Head and Table Mountain recur throughout the series, as do other views shaped by the city’s landscape and light.

Although Leda bought her house in Cape Town in 1994, she only moved there permanently in 1999. The ‘Cape Town Series’ belongs to those years of return, before she was living in the city again full-time.

Her final work, made in 2002/3 and set in Kirstenbosch Gardens, belongs in a sense to this same return. It also reflects her lasting love of gardens.