Dean de Villiers
I have spent my entire life drawing and always looking for perfection, testing myself, my stamina, my patience, and overcoming adversity. A large portion of my life was spent in the building industry as a plumber running my own business, along the way I picked up tiling as a second trade, later becoming a registered builder. My time in the building industry came to an end after recognising that utilising my creative side was, and always has been my one true passion.
Over the years I have been commonly referred to as the ideas man. I could easily find a solution to a problem, or create things make things operate easier. This stemmed from a very young age and still applies today. Of these traits and my creative side I apply this readily to my artwork, I have a talent for finding ways to do things, ideas that help me achieve my goals, my imagination not only runs wild it flourishes freely into what you see in my artwork from my graphite drawings to my kaleidoscope of acrylic and oil paintings. I find it undemanding to move from realism to surrealism, to abstract, pop art or any medium I put my hands to.
A question commonly asked is what inspires me to paint certain works, I find this question for me to be on the verge of unanswerable most of the time. In all honestly I paint what my head sees not my eyes, I seldom think when I start a painting, I let my imagination take over that when I complete a work I am as surprised as the next person to see the outcome. You will find my works to be vast, I use all mediums, paint and draw on all surfaces, medium permitting. I name my paintings often when the work is complete and find myself answering my own questions of what that painting means to me. As for my drawings I thrive on finding what looks the most difficult to draw, I like to push myself to my limits, I like to discover what’s possible, what’s reachable…