Social norms: physique Drawing by Reece Swanepoel

About Reece Swanepoel (b.1996) Contrary to traditional portraiture, for Reece Swanepoel the face is a story already in itself, it does not need the artist. But it is also an open platform for the artist to express himself and tell his own stories. In this way, Reece is a pirate. Representation is not the destination. He does not use sitters or models to represent a specific identity in his works. Although photographs often is his starting point, he quickly breaks away to give way to the spontaneous creative process and the imagination. To Swanepoel the portrait is superior to the figure, and the figure is the classic representation of art since the Paleolithic times. The portrait is more than a limb, a mere component of the body - it is the identity of the figure and the window of the heart. Reece has been practicing art since his early ages, but have been practicing as a full-time artist for 4 years. His artworks has evolved from tightly formal realism to a much looser, larger, expressive stroke at the same time he smoothly transitioned to doing portraits only. His paintings is textured and puzzling; his drawings expressive in strokes and controversial, screaming out both complexity and raw emotion. Morphing from figurative to expressive and back, his raw portraits evoke a tension between what we expect to see and the ugly wire-structure underneath. Reece Swanepoel lives and works in Potchefstroom, near Johannesburg where he is also studying art education.