Art Exhibitions

15 October 2021

Reece Swanepoel

An anaesthetic is any agent that causes a general loss of sensation. You do not feel things when you’re ‘going under’, it’s just a woozy unconsciousness. For that moment, you’re less human since ‘feeling’ in all the ways we do, contributes to our essence as a species.

 

My artworks aim to do the exact opposite of that. Through simple, honest elements like mark-making, colour and lines I make the viewer more human by letting them feel more than they allow through their inhibitions. Lately I feel that society has become the aforementioned agent, and my pictures give them a break from that.  It becomes the ‘art’-idote.

 

 

 

 

Reece Swanepoel (b.1996) is a contemporary expressive artist born in Bellville and raised in Mossel Bay, South Africa. He grew up as an outsider, always searching for answers to the strife and sufferings associated with the human condition.

 

The theme of melancholy is consistent in his work, portraying the anguished faces behind the masks of ordinary people, passers-by. Like any child, he picked up a pencil as a toddler, but unlike his peers at the time, he never put it down. His interest in art as more than just images to look at, lit up after he took the subject in High School. This interest soon turned into passion, later bordering on compulsion. Since then, he hasn’t stopped making art every single day, without exception.

 

After a gap-year where he aimed to see as many people and places as possible, he started his studies in Art Education at North-West University in 2016. After completing his bachelor’s degree, he walked into the world with an unrelenting passion to be the most prolific visual artist in history.

 

Since the sale of his first artwork in 2013, he has grown to be a force to be reckoned with. His art has been bought by collectors from USA to Tokyo, Norway to South Africa, his own country, where his work is still much sought after.

 

He currently lives and works in Pretoria.

LONGSTREET ART LOVERS 1932

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