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