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One man show.

I'm arranging a one-man-show in Mellville at Upstairs At Bamboo, the first time my work has been shown in Johannesburg in more than 20 years.

The exhibition opens on 10th August and runs for 10 days. I'll be in attendance at the gallery and I hope to see all my old friends again.

I shall keep you informed in my newsletters and on my website at artistvision.org.

Oom Bep's advice.

'Promise me one thing, my boy. That you'll never sell your soul to the devil.'

'Yes, I promise.'

'Know what I mean?'

'Yes, I know what you mean.'

I was in matric, sitting at our dining room table with oom Bep. Oom Bep was a big man, even by my standards, a Dutch architect who had settled in Heidelberg, and one of our best famiy friends. He was also one of the only people in Heidelberg who could advise me on the most important decision of my life. I had been offered a full bursary to study architecture at the university of my choice. Trouble was, I fully intended to study Art, and the bank made it clear that the bursary would not be available if I went this way.

Oom Bep, like all architects, had gone through a similar experience, and the one thing he wanted to know was if I had the drive to go through with it. Once he had established this, he investigated my motives.

'Just promise me this one thing,' he said, 'That you won't ever sell your soul to the devil.'

I did not have to ask what the devil was. It was clear to me; the gift of seeing and of celebrating is a special one, rare even among those who have it. We need to cherish it and to protect it from exploitation by the powers of materialism. How, I do not know, but we can always recognise the buyer.

This is a daily battle; every time we face a canvas we have to tap in, first, to our sincerity, to the source of our inspiration and vision.

One day in '84, after my career in Johannesburg came to a stop, and I was at the lowest point of my artistic life, the phone rang. An art director at a major advertising agency invited me to do a painting, any subject, which somewhere in the picture had a wine bottle in it. I turned it down. He asked if he could come and see me. 'Gladly,' I said, 'but I won't change my mind.'

He walked into our little home on the railway line in Harfield Village, bending because of the low ceiling, and introduced himself.

"I hope you did not come all this way for the wine project.'

'No, in fact, I didn't,' he said, 'I came to shake your hand.'

What was this, in him, and in oom Bep, that recognised a different truth?

Invitation

I want to print proper, high quality invitations on good paper and send them to you and to any sympathetic souls you may know, something people might like to keep.

With the power of email, the old-fashioned mailing list is an endeangered species. If you would like to receive such an invitation, please email me your postal address, and I shall make sure that it gets to you.

Please also let your friends know, and with their permission, let me add them to my invitation list by sending me their email address, or, if they would like a printed invite, their postal address. This list is managed by myself, by hand, and nobody else has access to it.

A visit to my studio.

For those of you who are within range of Simon's Town, and would like to see what's up in my studio, you are welcome to drop in for a cup of tea. Just phone first: delightful as it is, it is a long drive.

Website

http://artistvision.org/

Workshops

For details on workshops and classes in Cape Town and Europe, click here

The art of Ryno Swart