Of Art, Love, Shakespeare and the Natural Order

Reading time: 10 minutes

By Philippa Hadlow

A journey to Kaponga one sunny Saturday morning led me to the one hundred-year-old villa of Roger Peters and Maree Horner. Cordial greetings welcomed me and as I replied in kind, those salutations marked the beginning and end of my social equilibrium. 

Expecting a simple chat about art – Roger and Maree are both Elam School of Fine Arts-graduated (1974) artists – I was instead led down a garden path to discover real-life erudite, surreal, creative brilliance. 

The exposé begins innocently enough with a wander to Roger’s writing shed. Here, for the last twenty-five years, he has delved into the nuances of Shakespeare’s sonnets, all 154 of them, line by line. Not only delved, but analysed, interpreted, translated, and equated to what Roger describes as the meaning of life. Roger believes that Shakespeare’s sonnets are indicative of a nature-based philosophy encapsulated by the edict that “articulates the natural logic between the sexual dynamic of the body with its potential to increase, and the erotic dynamic of the mind with its capacity for truth and beauty”. 

Some of Maree’s work echoes Shakespeare too. Shylock’s ‘pound of flesh’ comes macabrely alive in her 2011 Furniture of the World digital art display of cut-away bellies, no less. They’re tidily stuffed into tin pails, wooden boxes, suitcases, and sinks; complete with insy or outsy belly buttons evocative of umbilical nurturing and the toil of childrearing.