My name is Reece Swanepoel.
I am a contemporary expressive artist and founder of the Grotescism art movement.
I am a sculptor a drawer and a painter focussing on the portrait and human figure
I was born in Cape Town and gre up in Mossel Bay and didn't have an easy upbringing. I was raised by a single mother and often lived with her on the outskirts of poverty.
Even as a child, information, properties of reality and the human condition interested me. Up to this day, I try to convey these interests in my art.
My interest flamed up when I took visual art at high school and learnt of art as a language rather than mere images.
Soon this morphed into passion, bordering on compulsion.
Since that time, I haven't stopped working on pieces manically every single day.
My art is essential and necessary, just like the pains of life it often depicts. It gives one roots and keeps you grounded. I leave cognitive processes at the door of my studio because I want whatever I create to come from transparent, raw emotion. Emotion, especially empathy, stands center-stage in my works.
My goal is to make the viewer feel something for the mere depiction of someone and then make them question why they can't do this outside of the doors of the gallery.
It makes you question, and that is powerful.
I'm establishing my name in the South African art scene and simultaneously on an international platform. I am very fortunate to have people who represent me and regularly collect my work. I call them friends.
My vision is to change the world for the better , and I know I can achieve this because I have had many viewers and clients personally tell me the epiphanies my art has enlightened them to. So, on a micro-scale, I am already achieving my dream.