Jan Cilliers de Wet - Wandering Artist
Art has been in my family for 3 generations, and in fact I still use the easel I inherited from my grandfather. As a child of around 5 my father bought my sister and I sketch pads and set up little still life arrangements for us to draw, so art is pretty much coded in.
I was very fortunate to be sent as a rather low income child to King Edward VII in Johannesburg, a rather excellent government school with the equally excellent Ulrich Louw as the art master.
Post-school afternoons in the sun-beamed art room painting watercolours and posters is still the best memory I have of school. Uria Heep and Deep Purple blasting away on my battered tape deck...
As an adult I was in the right time and place when CGI first came to SA in its most primitive early form (does anyone out there actually remember a 286 computer?!) and I rode that wave as it broke over the local broadcast and video scene, notching up some notable firsts and winning a pile of now forgotten awards.
Eventually the forces of my life conspired to steer me to art proper, which is where you find me, now in my 14th year as a painter of pictures.
If there's anything like a theory to my work it is to allow the paint to speak. The fresh immediacy of a stroke laid down outside of the strictures of thought is what allows magic to enter from Forever, and, via the moment, take up permanent residence on the canvas.