Keith Joubert

'Keith Joubert’s Africa is a journey into the heart and soul of the continent. He has spent a lifetime following his own heart to the remote corners of this land – examining its wealth of biodiversity and culture on a quest to understand its joys and anguish. His studio is an open thatched construction overlooking a waterhole. He travels regularly to Botswana, Mozambique, and the great game areas of East Africa. He particularly favours the point of conflict where species and ideologies collide. Images combine in riotous colour on large canvasses that seek to unravel the mysteries at the essence of survival for us all.'

Trent Read

Velaphi Mzimba

" Velaphi Mzimba - probably South Africa's most iconic living painter whose work is in major international collections"

Trent Read


Velaphi Mzimba paints portraits, figures, abstracts, street scenes, township life and he also sculpts in bronze. His colourful paintings reflect the vibrance and rapidly evolving environment of South Africa’s black townships. Although he was deeply involved in the struggle for liberation against apartheid, his work shows no hint of angst or pain. Instead, his paintings have an infectious optimism that warms all viewers. This richness of spirit combined with an extraordinary technical virtuosity has no doubt led to the success that he has experienced over the last few years.


Mzimba’s huge faces, young boys with heads made out of squashed cans and complex mixed media landscapes grace many public, corporate and private collections worldwide. This success is not built upon clever marketing or the vagaries of fashion. Mzimba’s work constantly surprises and challenges his followers. Huge brooding and richly painted portraits of proud tribesmen and women are painstakingly painted in his studio. These monumental works which drain his energies are interspersed with impish, playful works that are often created from a myriad of seemingly unconnected found objects. Somehow, in Mzimba’s hands, they are joined together to form intelligent and wonderfully decorative comments on everyday life in South Africa.

To view more of these fine artworks visit: http://finearts.co.za/artists/velaphi-mzimba.html

Leon Vermeulen discusses why he paints

Unlike many artists are able to do, Leon Vermeulen, discusses the thinking behind the paint. He has this to say:

'The Work is about painting and it is about the body. The body as attraction and the body as failure. Painting as attraction and failure. It is painting what to say, how to say it, or whether to say anything at all. It is about posing and exposing.

The work is about being in the body and being in the painting – the body as theatre and painting as theatre. to turn awareness and experience into paint, creating silent language. it is about speechlessness, stillness and silence, about choosing painting. It is painting as sanctuary.

I paint the same image over and over. it is the body I know and have to deal with. it is about searching for an image that can depict not knowing how to be – in the body. I am not painting what the figure means, but what it means to paint the figure.

In the theatre of model posing and artist drawing, something happens. The consciousness of being in a pose seems to become more acute than the unconscious posing of the quotidian. I am trying to depict this.

I have always painted and I like the silence and slowness of painting. It is an ancient technology. For me the canvas is where experience becomes more condensed, more tangible and less chaotic. Things become paint and I can grasp that. Paint is the medium I know and use to articulate something that approaches meaning. I need that.'

October 2009
Everything can’t be said (WITTGENSTEIN)

View this exhibition at:http://finearts.co.za/artists/leon-vermeulen.html

OR view his discussion on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oShF4jDNOa4

Trent Read

Simon Stone - One of South Africa's Finest Painters

Simon Stone's infrequent exhibitions are eagerly anticipated by a growing body of collectors both here and abroad.

Stone is acknowledged as one of our finest painters and this exhibition of small works is an opportunity to see him at his best. The paintings have a presence and power that goes with much larger works whilst retaining that quiet elegance and eschewing of all inessentials and gimmicky that are Stone’s trademark.

We are in the process of producing a book on Stone’s work which will be written by Basil Jones and Hazel Friedman and this will be published next year.

Should you wish to view more of his works visit: http://www.finearts.co.za/artists/simon-stone-5.html

Trent Read

Hannalie Taute - No Strings Attached

Hannalie Tauté recently moved from George, a large town in the Southern Cape, to Prince Albert, a small, iconic and very beautiful village in the Karoo.

Some artists will react to their surroundings but others, like Tauté, live and work in their own universe and I see no sign that her dark and edgy feel has softened at all.

Tauté’s comments on gender, motherhood and childhood are sly, witty and beautifully crafted and are without a hint of po-faced sermonizing.

Her work is being increasingly collected both here and abroad. She is a young artist of great talent and originality whose vision horrifies some, but is addictive to those who share her noir sensibilities.

To view her exhibition online visit:

http://finearts.co.za/artists/hannalie-taut.html

Phillemon Hlungwani Exhibition at The Irma Stern Gallery

Phillemon Hlungwani has virtuoso drawing skills and these, combined with his phenomenal technical ability, make him an artist who is surely destined for great things. Hlungwani grew up in rural Limpopo province and he is deeply proud of his people’s traditional customs and cultural practices. He views these however not as translator or anthropologist but as an artist with a vision that is aesthetically firmly based in the twenty first century.

As a young herdboy he spent many months tending the family goats and his intimate knowledge of the Bushveld landscape is evident in these enormous etchings which are astounding to anyone versed in the technical skills required to pull them with such crispness and lucidity.

In the brief time we have worked together which was interrupted by a sojourn in New York courtesy of the Ampersand foundation, Hlungwani’s works have been bought by serious collectors in Europe, Britain and the USA but this is his first major exhibition and the first showing of his works in Cape Town

Phillemon Hlungwani and I join in thanking Gideon de Plessis for effecting the introduction which has resulted in our business relationship and, of course, this exhibition.
As always Christopher Peter and his professional team make curating an exhibition at this wonderful venue a real and almost effortless pleasure.

To view this exhibition online visit:

http://finearts.co.za/artists/phillemon-hlungwani.html