​Contemporary South African Art

Article credits to http://artodyssey1.blogspot.com/2011/01/ryan-hewett-ryan-was-born-in-kwa-zulu.html



Ryan was born in Kwa-Zulu Natal (Durban) 1979. Ryan excelled in art throughout school before studying graphic design at the Natal Technikon.
He moved to Cape Town after his studies and that is where he found a passion for oil on canvas and portraiture as a subject.

Ryan has been painting professionally for 6 years and is self taught. He started off exclusively with a gallery in Franschoek and since then he has been approached by numerous galleries. He has sold work to international corporate companies and private collectors as well as local collectors.

An art critics view of Ryan's work:

There is an interesting tension between Ryan's technique and subject matter: his paintings confront the viewer with raw, realist images of typically African subjects, mysteriously situated in decorative and non-figurative spaces. While the unadorned and simple personae express a fierce, confident and proud African beauty, depicted through the genre of portraiture, the overall compositions also allude to Ryan's preoccupation with the art-making process itself.He avoids narrative devices and gratuitous story-telling, and through portraiture, confronts us with questions (rather than answers) about the meaning of personal identity and the artist's own inescapable African-ness."

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