Interview by Jimon
1-Where do you reside and create? Cape Town, South Africa.
2-Did you study art or is it inherent? Never, I am completely self-taught.
3-How would you describe Gert Rautenbach? Long ago, on my birthday, my wife and son said my best 3 things are: an interesting man, generous, with a great laugh. That was my greatest compliment. I am bookish. Before turning to art I wrote a blog about literature, movies, art and opera, in my native language - Afrikaans.
4-Is there any reality behind the characters in your paintings or are they purely fantasy? The essense of my art is to express universal emotions in extremely simple ways people can relate to. The characters are not based on myself or real people.
5-What do you dream about? Winning the lottery and retiring from my day job so I could immerse myself in developing my craft.
6-If you could have dinner with 3 artists living/dead who would be at your table?Cezanne, Repin and my late father.
7-What artist working today you most admire? I do not know the contemporary artists today.
8-Do you consider yourself a pop artist? The very opposite. Pop is about color and cool and my art is emotion-based black and white.
9-In your professional carrier, what is the longest you have gone without creating? 30 years. I drew as a child and young adult and then stopped when I started to work, until I got retrenched for a few months in 2015. As it turns out it was the best thing that could have happened to me. Tolstoy wrote a great story about a man who thinks about his life-decisions only three times, decades apart, each time after suffering the loss of what he had clung to.
10-Do you have an assistant and if so what does he or she do? No.
11-What is the source of inspiration for you? Believing that something beautiful will exist today that didn't exist yesterday - and that I will create it.
12-Are you an optimist, pessimist or realist? Pessimist.
13-What scares you the most? The thought of falling ill and not being able to take care of my family.
14-What emotion do you expect to be on people’s faces when they look at your art? The WOW of seeing life emanating from a few strokes.
15-What is art? Art is the moment when you find the needle in the haystack.
16-How would someone find you on the internet? On Instagram - @gertrautenbach. I only keep my last 100 pieces on Instagram.
17-Please name the first thing that comes to your mind while reading the following:
Art= purpose
Food= curry & rice
Sports= Rugby and Chess
Politics= Socialism
Poor= robbed
God= never met
Rich= destroy the tax havens around the world please!
Luxury= ditto
Sex= consenting adults
Picasso= macho man
Religion= Spiritual