THROUGH THE EYES OF A PENCIL
WORDS: SHIRLEY LE GUERN
The work of Vincent Reid will feature in the Boucher Legacy art auction. This is the story of this amazing talent ...
If you don’t believe that you can feel with your eyes, then you need to take time out to really look at the intriguing sketches of Midlands wildlife and landscape artist, Vincent Reid.
Using just the humble pencil, he is able to capture the folds and wrinkles of some Africa’s most majestic beasts – from the elephant to the black rhino. In your mind you can run your fingers over the weathered skin of a wizened bull elephant or even touch the tangled whiskers of a leopard. Nothing is too big or too small – from a busy dung beetle to the steady gaze of a giant buffalo.
Everything from majestic kudu to giraffe, warthog, meerkats, owls and eagles. All have met his pencil – with the almost intimate interactions of families of elephants, cheetah cubs and prides of lions captured on paper to touch hearts.
Although most of his work is hanging on the walls of the enigmatic Platform Gallery near Balgowan in the Midlands or presented online, it is in the garden of his peaceful Howick home where he often draws that we meet.
MAKING UP FOR LOST TIME
Throughout our discussion, there’s always the sense that Vincent deeply regrets not having pursued his passion for drawing and his identity as an artist earlier. Instead, he describes himself as a farmer’s son who went off on a tangent in pursuit of a career.
Born in what was Rhodesia in 1970, his most formative years were in post-war Zimbabwe. His father had bought a farm in the north east at Concession – which he describes as a very obscure little place.
Emphatic that he would never follow in his father’s farming footsteps, he recalls how he “felt the freedom to just gad about” and wandered off with a bicycle or motorbike, dog in tow and perched on a rock or beside a river to watch life go by.
The only creative one in a family of four, he won art competitions aplenty during his school years and his memories of art lessons sketch the beginning of his journey.
“In Zimbabwe, you couldn’t buy paint or canvas. So, in the eighties, my high school art department was a beautiful studio with benches and perfect lighting, but there was not a tube of paint or a canvas in sight. There were pencils and cartridge paper and a ball of plastercene from which you could grab a piece and do some modelling. As a result, I did almost my entire O levels in pencil.”
His first detour was a year studying psychology at the University of Zimbabwe followed by three years studying interior design at the then Durban Technikon. It was here that he met his future wife and fellow artist, Tess.
His return to Zimbabwe was the beginning of 18 years in the exhibition and events industry.
After five years spent designing for trade shows and exhibitions in Zimbabwe, the politics of President Mugabe saw the local economy nose dive. The family farm was lost.
“Everything crashed. For about two years, I just wandered around Africa trying to find exhibition work in places like Angola – it was stressful. I suppose Covid has been a bit like that. One year, you have the Royal Show and the Indaba and the next year, all is gone,” he muses.
When some Durban clients invited him to work for them, he moved to the city in 2003. When that company was bought out, he found himself without a job and launched his own business in 2008.
“Fortunately, we did pretty well at the World Cup but I was on pills to wake up and pills to go to sleep,” Vincent recalls.
He focused almost entirely on computer aided design which, together with the distraction and the intense stress of managing and growing his company, meant that creativity took a back seat. By 2011, he was disillusioned enough to make a life changing decision to sell his business and return to the country to become a professional artist.
The family relocated to Howick with Vincent determined to use the proceeds from the sale of his business as a cushion to develop and grow his career as an artist during that first year.
“You need that time to develop a style, a following, to get the first sales under your belt. Having been in business helped. Because we weren’t a big exhibition company, we had to narrow down to what we could do well and better than the next guys. (Even as an artist) I was quite keen to focus on a particular genre. Instinctively, I knew that you can’t do 500 different things. I was drawing in pencil from the word go, so I went back to that.”
A visit to Vincent’s home studio again reveals the depth of detail and shows the beauty of wildlife through his eyes. A drawing of a cheetah is taking shape.
Asked to describe his style, he replies: “Pencil, monochrome, a lot of white negative space and wildlife.”
DRAWN TO AFRICA
Just after selling his business, Vincent returned to Zimbabwe for a visit. He came back with a photograph of a group of hippos which became his first pencil artwork. He still has it in his studio today and admits that it is quite different from what he is doing now.
The first time that he set up a body of work was for the Hilton Arts Festival in September 2011. He says he was still transitioning out of his business and put up 10 to 12 pieces. He got plenty of compliments but no sales.
He admits that is was hard not to be discouraged and to continue to focus on what he believed that he could achieve.
“The onus is on you to just go on a trajectory in terms of how you work and the quality of your work. Then funny little breakthroughs started happening,” he says.
He put two small portraits of little Black children in a book café in Kloof and they sold. Although he has never returned to portraiture, this gave him hope and he continued to contact galleries and try to persuade them to take him on as a new artist.
Through the perseverance of his wife, his paintings found their way into the Butterfly Gallery in Pietermaritzburg, the art gallery at Piggly Wiggly in the Midlands and the Imbizo galleries in Ballito and Hoedspruit. He felt he’d turned a corner as artworks begin to sell in mid-2012.
But another challenge was just around the corner.
“At one stage, it was really great and my work was being seen in a lot of places,” he says. The flip side was that he had to drive long distances to just find out if his work had been sold and then wrestle to get the proceeds of a sale paid over to him.
“Eventually, by 2016, we again felt like we were back to square one because we had either been kicked out of galleries for demanding our payment or had had to exit just because we couldn’t get our money. So, we started out on our own here in Howick,” he says.
That lasted until the advent of Covid. Their gallery, at Yard 41, relied on visiting domestic and overseas tourists. But the overheads were steed and, with little chance of a tourism revival for the Midlands in the short term, they were forced to shut their doors.
It was just after Covid arrived that the Platform Gallery opened up. Still new, it had very little wall art and Vincent was happy to fill that gap. He says sales have strengthened during the second half of 2020.
Looking back, Vincent says that his art has taken him to some of Southern Africa’s most beautiful locations including Namibia’s Etosha National Park, Mana Pools and Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe, Chobe National Park in Botswana and Hluhluwe, Addo Elephant Park and Mapungubwe in South Africa.
TREES OF LIFE
It was on a game drive during a visit to Mapungubwe with his daughter that he discovered his love for what was to become one of his signature subjects – the baobab tree.
He says he had long admired the work of fellow wildlife pencil sketch artist, Bowen Boshier, who is known for his baobabs.
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“He used to do baobabs quirkily with a tiny little warthog in the corner. As kids, when we went to Kariba, we knew we were hitting the real low veld when we saw our first baobab. It was the same in South Africa. When you saw your first baobab, you knew you were not at home anymore.”
The Mapungubwe game drive introduced him to a tree that was almost a small city. “At one of the biggest trees, there was just this humming below the ground because the bees were there. There was also a colony of weavers, a colony of fruit bats and some swallows. This was all happening and who knows what else was going on. That tree was just vibing.”
To date, Vincent has drawn 11 different baobabs.
His favourite is at Pandamatenga, a village in the Chobe district of Botswana.
“My best mate and his family lived there for a while. It’s not the biggest but it has an amazing shape. They have music events there, people come from cities like Gabarone. It’s a farming area and it has got this awesome vibe – you can climb it. It’s like a natural jungle gym. It was central to the whole community and I thought, this thing is magic.”
He says his drawing of this fascinating tree has been his most successful artwork to date.
EXPERIENCING ART
In addition to travelling far and wide for his art, Vincent also enjoys working close to home.
“I love the country. I’ve really enjoyed doing a lot of little Midlands landscapes. One that stands out for me is of a farmer and his sheep dogs. His wife asked me to come to Mooi River and draw them for his birthday. These dogs actually herd cows, so I got to spend the afternoon with him. The outcome was one portrait of a dog and an image of him with his two dogs. I just happened to get the perfect shot when he was looking down and his two dogs were looking up – all the textures, the chequered shirt and the farmers hat.’”
That was in 2016. Since then, much of his work has focussed on wildlife.
“What does happen is that you get boxed in, but in a good way. You get known for something and it is not wise to completely change. All these things are gradual and the last two years have been hard. Because of recent events (including Covid), we haven’t gone away. You don’t have those interactions. The last time I went to a game reserve was in April 2019 (Kariba). So, I haven’t been able to connect with my subjects.”
A trip to view pangolins in Limpopo was also cancelled. Vincent says he received some beautiful photographs but still missed out on the experience.
“It’s important that you live your lifestyle as an artist. If its too much just getting photos and reproducing them and not getting the experience,” he explains.
Vincent also admits that may be taking longer to create artworks. It could just be age, he hints. “I’ve heard that from a lot of artists. We end up taking longer because we get pedantic and we get more particular about things. I also think that, as we get older, we don’t have the ability to output as quickly and put in the hours. So, now I’m certainly taking the less is more route.”
His own experience has also equipped him to mentor three young artists who he has taken under his wing over the past two years.
He laments the fact that young and talented artists are often forced to turn away from their passions and study even though they struggle academically. This certainly applies to his own charges.
“They are very raw but very, very talented. For them, there are not many options. Their parents can’t send them to varsity. Even if they could, they don’t have the academics to get there. It’s just not worth it. Why can’t they just do art?”
That, too, is close to home.
Talking of home, Vincent is also yearning for a trip back to Zimbabwe.
“What I want to do in Zimbabwe is return to where I lived. There will be people and places that I experienced and that I will now see through a different lens. It may be a trip down memory lane, but I think some awesome artworks will come out of that. There will also be new things,” he suggests.
