Wayne Barker paints his way out of a hard place

It's nine months since I last spoke to Wayne Barker. That was ahead of the opening of his exhibition of silkscreens at the Everard Read Gallery in Johannesburg.

Now we're back at the gallery and the life of South Africa's favourite art anarchist has been anything but "super boring" (one of the artist's favourite phrases) since we last spoke.

First there was his trip with his wife and a friend to God's Window in Mpumalanga, inspired by Barker's idea that he "wanted to buy a house and get out of Joburg and go paint and look at the ellies [elephants]," a dream rudely interrupted when the chalet they were staying in was invaded by men carrying shotguns and pistols who made off with laptops, phones and other valuables.

Then his French wife, Carole, was unceremoniously deported following an issue with her visa. As Barker describes it, the couple "had a fight and she went to the airport. I was watching telly on my bed and the phone rang and she said, 'Wayne they want to arrest me, my visa isn't legal.' I hear her shouting at the police.

Then the policeman comes on to the phone and he says 'Tell Mama Carole to chill otherwise she'll go to jail, get her on to the plane.' Now we're working on the come-back." Finally, Barker's beloved mother passed away at the age of 76.

Barker's response to these personal setbacks has been to create five paintings, all titled Bantu, which deal with humanity or the lack of it and have seen him return to a medium, which he "absolutely loves. Painting healed me - after those ones I revisited other ones in my studio that weren't quite complete. I was like what the f**k? So I went and resolved the ones I had in the studio."

The five paintings, that make up Barker's new show Ubuntu O! Ubuntu, are striking in their darkness and angry splashes of paint that submerge images of Mandela, Biko, a girl on a boat. For Barker they are a personal response to difficult circumstances and he remembers that, "At one point when I last looked at my mother I thought: 'I'm not going to see her alive again.'

So it was almost like predictive text but predictive text works for me in this way: to heal and to say these are paintings and they're finished. I feel quite relieved about them because people would come to my studio and I'd tell them about all the drama - drama A to drama Z. It's quite nice that they now exist in their vulnerability and are exhibited in the space."

Barker's new paintings provide a reminder of the personal impetus behind the artistic process that's kept him going for decades. It's another step in a journey and one that has reminded Barker that, while he may be allergic to the glue and leather of his recently purchased BMW, he does "like to cheer up and that's why I paint - I make art out of my shit. I'm not feeling that dull at the moment. It's weird living in the world. Where is humanity?"

Ubuntu O! Ubuntu is at the Everard Read Gallery in Johannesburg until December 14.