26 June 2016 1 Min Read

Born to write and bring books to explosive life

in Lifestyle / Daily Life by Silusapho Nyanda

- ENVIRONMENTAL ADVENTURE: Retired architect Richard Latimer with ‘The Rainbow’s Heart’, a children’s book about saving a mysterious colony of bees which he wrote and illustrated in 1982. It was republished last month Pictures: STEPHANIE LLOYD

- DETAIL DRIVEN: This vibrant, whimsical coloured ink appears in the recently republished ‘The Rainbow’s Heart’

- FROM THE SEA: Richard Latimer created this fantastical fish sculpture from a sleeper washed up at Mermaid’s Pool in the 1980s. It now greets visitors at his front door

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By BARBARA HOLLANDS

It would take hours to absorb the paintings, sculptures, book collections and other fascinating artefacts in Dick Latimer’s vibrant Nahoon Mouth home.

The house he shares with wife Leila – herself a creator of watercolours, quilts and pottery – is an external embodiment of his extraordinary approach to art, because for Latimer, 69, beauty is found in detail.

In Hardly A Road, Latimer tells the real story of a Land Rover journey he took into Swaziland, Mozambique, Rhodesia and Botswana in the 1970s with his late first wife Marge.

The zealous creator has four books on the boil and works on them seven days a week. Two of these – Anna and the Birds and The Impossible Garden – are for children and contain his magical illustrations, another explores his fascination with cave art, while the fourth is a collage book based on Darwin’s Diaries.

“I lapse into sculpture and pottery, but I think I have as many books in me for as long as I am alive.” — barbarah@dispatch.co.za