01 Aug 2017

Itumeleng Boitshwarelo, 19, of Francistown says he creates paintings that are imbued with a life beyond the ordinary.

He explained that he started fine art at Bokamoso Junior Secondary School and continued with it at Naledi Senior Secondary School and also relied on people’s desire for beauty and poetics.

Boitshwarelo said he was unique from other artists as his drawings were done on music records while other artists used canvas to do their paintings.

He said he has attended three exhibitions at Thapong Visual exhibition in 2014 where he scooped position three and in 2015 attended the same exhibition where he was crowned the winner.

Inspired by Wilson Ngoni from Botswana and Fabion Millian Internationally, he said he intended to take his artwork outside the country, and to own an art gallery and make exhibitions. He advised the youth that painting was not easy work, but that if they had passion they should not give up.

“I think of my setting up as finished inventories of fragments: objects, drawings, paintings, photographs and other inventions,” he said.

Boitshwarelo stated that his paintings were improvisational sites in which the constructed and the ready-made were used to question the making of the world through language and knowledge.

He further explained that the objects depicted could evoke a wide variety of emotions depending on their arrangements as well as colour choice and handling of the paint.

He advised other artists to work hard and come up with creative ideas to make their paintings more interesting and attention grabbing. ENDS