Magic Carpet was inspired by cycling trips Matthew Prins took with his daughter along eerily empty streets in the southern suburbs of Cape Town during the lockdown months of 2020. Floating through a world that felt all their own, the overlooked and mundane took on a sense of wonder and beauty. In the ubiquitous plants that grow along sidewalks and the flowers that colour open spaces, Prins found creative rejuvenation and a source of inspiration for this body of work. The paintings capture the magical realism of that strange moment in time, when nothing man made felt important anymore and the natural felt extremely vital; when the familiar felt strange, as if seen from a magical carpet. Prins’ paintings remind the viewer that beauty is all around, if you only look.