John Meyer

Artist biography:

'As all my narrative works, this painting is inspired by the movies, particularly early Film Noir. It is an unresolved single narrative.' John Meyer

Born in Bloemfontein, South Africa in 1942

Meyer spent his formative childhood years in Klerksdorp, a small Highveld mining town west of Johannesburg in what is now Gauteng Province. He is regarded as the leading figure in the Realist movement in Southern Africa.

Decidedly contemporary in his vision and a proponent of modernism in all its guises, Meyer has a considered commitment to representational painting. Be it his portraits, landscapes or narrative scenes he is concerned with the complexities of visual perception and their solutions. His paintings are not mere representations of existing places and things, but exist as indelible retrospection. He describes his paintings as being 'made.' Each layer of tension or emotion is built up over a mental and physical process creating a credible, charged and tangible event in each of his paintings.

He draws his inspiration from contemporary culture yet renders his subject matter with a classicist's brush. At the centre of his new work is the concept of the narrative, the unfolding story, the moving picture. From 1967 to 1969 Meyer worked as an illustrator in London, where he freelanced for magazines such as Readers Digest and newspapers like The Times and The Telegraph, as well as for various advertising agencies in the UK. He moved back to South Africa in 1969, where he became the country's first full-time, specialist illustrator servicing the advertising industry.

Over the years he has become a court painter to the rich and powerful, and his subjects range from Nobel Peace Prize winners Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk, to renowned concert pianist Vladimir Horowitz.