Koketso Rabanye
30 Jun 2022
Art is a reflection of one’s soul, body, and mind. Through the intricate movement of the pencil on paper, leaving remnants of graphite – grey like ash – a reminder of the flames set alight, bright as the rising sun within the artist’s eyes – a passion transferred through the hands and fingers.
To honour that fire, we review a rather interesting piece titled “Phases and Faces” illustrated by 23-year-old Omphile Gopane aka Timothy Grey, a piece that truly set things ablaze.
Grey describes his piece “Phases and Faces” as a surreal life-related drawing that reflects all the phases people go through and it is within these phases there is some form of action-reaction towards some of the events that occur in our lives. Phases and Faces represent an internal conflict both experienced by children and adults, where people struggle to portray their “real” emotions because society has conditioned them not to, instead, people put on a specific façade to deflect their feelings towards either challenges or struggles they deal with daily.
Now, this reflection is one that struck a chord, because as people – obviously not all of us come from the same background nor encounter the same problems, but due to the fact we’ve been conditioned to not put our emotions on our sleeves, or to not overshare how we’re feeling as it renders us susceptible to outside dangers. We’re then forced to live in a tiny bubble, that at any given time is about to overwhelm and explode due to the amount of pressure we put on ourselves to portray the image of perfection and serenity for the world to see, when, we’re really in distress ourselves.
About the artist:
Omphile Gopane formally known as Timothy Grey is a 23-year-old-artist, born and raised in Mahikeng and is a Computer Science student at the North-West University. Grey started drawing in 2006 and has been further developing his “hidden talent” throughout the years till now, drawing cartoons, day-to-day objects and people.