Ratsibe recognised
Qtn artist ‘best in the Eastern Cape’
SIMPIWE Ratsibe, whose artwork and paintings have been displayed in galleries across the country, has recently won an award as the Best Visual Artist in the Eastern Cape.
The former Rep cartoonist said the award would open many doors for him. “Art is my life. I’ve loved painting since I was a little boy. I have done paintings on commission for the late President Nelson Mandela. I always used to go from school to the J.C. Marshall Art Gallery and to the library just to gaze at art every day, yet I believed that painting was not something that black people could do. I thought only white people could do it.”
He gives credit to his former teacher, Lonwabo Maka, who he says was instrumental in his career. “When I was 13, my teacher took me to a friend of his, Thembani Mqayi, who was an art student at Fort Hare and I saw a black painter for the first time. I have been painting ever since.”
He says his talent has taught him valuable lessons. “A painting doesn’t always start out as a masterpiece. This teaches me that in life, it’s not about how you start, it’s about how you finish.”
Ratsibe says his relentless perseverance is key to creating his award-winning work. “To create a masterpiece, you need time and patience. When you paint, you make a lot of mistakes that you can’t just rub off, but those same mistakes can help turn your work into a masterpiece.”
He says he has discovered many other things about art. “I started exploring all the other things I could do, and today I can not only paint, but I can also draw with a computer, I do a lot of graphic designing and I’ve received an award for that as well. I went to teach myself how to design websites and do video editing.”
Following his success as an artist Ratsibe says at the age of 21 he lobbied for the establishment of the Queenstown Art Centre where he gave free art lessons to aspiring artists for five years. “There was no sponsorship and one of those artists, Luyolo Dlikilili, is a fashion designer who continues to win many fashion contests.”
He said artists should work together to make a living from their talent.
“Artists in South Africa need to look at themselves as entrepreneurs. I always say that you can’t be an artist and be poor because an artist is someone who can take mud, put it in an oven and make clay pots to sell. The problem is not that artists don’t have money, it’s that artists don’t want to work together,” he said.