Leeuwenhof Artist Biographies
Kenneth M Alexander
The artist, author and activist - better known as Artist In Athlone, Kenneth M Alexander - is a visual artist who comes from a typical South African background, which is an eclectic array of cultures, beliefs and experiences.
He endeavours to bring understanding and insight into the distinctive cultures, culminating in the melting pot that is South Africa. Thus, his art is a social comment on the history and politics of the country.
As an avid photographer, Kenneth is always on the lookout for scenes depicting the heart of Cape Town, South Africa and the world. This too, is part of his art.
Kenneth is also the author of several books, which showcase his life experience in both apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. His books are illustrated with some of his large collection of photographs. His latest book, Man About Town is the first part of his autobiography.
Most of Kenneth’s art strongly reflects his architectural experience of the past 50 years.
Kenneth was born and now lives and work in Athlone. Thus, a lot of his paintings depict life and culture as experienced in Athlone, but also the wider Cape Town and South African political and social landscape.
Athlone is a typical ‘Coloured’ township on the sandy Cape Flats in Cape Town, steeped in struggle history since the 1970’s and 1980’s. City Park Stadium from which the murdered activist Imam Haron was buried, Alexander Sinton High School and Hewat Training College (now College of Cape Town) are well known historic buildings in the revolution history of South Africa. The Trojan Horse Memorial, where three young people were murdered on 15 October 1985; the statue of Coline Willams and Robbie Waterwitch; Ashley Kriel’s and Anton Fransch’s homes and places of death are within walking distance of Art In Athlone.
Kenneth’s studio, Art in Athlone, endeavours to make art accessible to locals by exhibiting its art and books in the local libraries. It remains relevant in a world in which - especially during the COVID-19 pandemic - virtual became more real than physical reality by using social media. Until the lockdown in March 2020, Kenneth was teaching art to adults and learners at local schools and at Art In Athlone.
Leetham Jacobs
Leetham Jacobs was born in Athlone and grew up in Kewtown, on the Cape Flats. He says he started sketching at the age of 4, after his father brought home a picture that he liked. Having lost his father at the age of 9, Leetham continues to draw and finds self expression through drawing. He says that he draws anything that comes to his mind. Speaking of his drawing ‘Cape Town’, Leetham says that he was inspired to do this drawing after looking at a picture of District 6. Leetham is in Grade 11 at Peakview Secondary School in Athlone. He says living in Kewtown has its challenges, but he finds an outlet through his art. Although his school does not provide art as a subject, Leetham started attending Art in Athlone last year before it was closed due to COVID.
Elton Jagels
Elton Jagels is a freelance artist who lives and works in the Laaiplek, Velddrift area of the Western Cape. He focuses on 3D art and mixed media painting, using acrylic mediums. Elton studied graphic design and has been painting professionally since 2005, using his signature 3D painting technique, a skill that he developed himself. Like most of his community, both his father and grandfather were fishermen. Elton’s art depicts the West Coast fishing community and scenery, which he says is intrinsically part of how his community lives and who they are.
Leshan Moses
Leshan Moses was born in Mitchell’s Plein on the Cape Flats, but moved to Port Elizabeth at the age of 6, where she lived until her return to Mitchell’s Plein at the age of 11. She started drawing when she was 8 years old and from there taught herself “different techniques.” After taking art as a subject from Grade 10, Leshan moved from drawing to painting. Leshan says that art is an escape that makes her “feel better about life”.
Speaking about her painting, which depicts gang initiation, Leshan says:
“I was just thinking about the gangsterism in my community and how younger children are manipulated into gangsterism, because they come from broken homes. She adds: “I just wanted to show that the child is not only killing someone else, but they are also killing themselves in the process, because once you are in a gang you can’t get out.”
Nanette Gordon
Nanette Gordon is a self-taught artist, wife, mother and grandmother, who is from the Pacaltsdorp community in George. Nanette lives in one of the last remaining sod houses in Pacaltsdorp, which has been home to her husband’s family for many years. These houses, built from hardened sand bricks, were built by formerly enslaved people following their emancipation. Nanette started painting later in life after having undergone a life-changing experience, which she says propelled her into art.
Nanette’s untitled artwork depicts the sexual exploitation and rape of enslaved women. In her painting a pair of hands on the shoulders of the crying woman, represents the exploitative slaveholder.
Peter Clarke
The multiple award-winning artist and writer Peter Clarke (2 June 1929 - 13 April 2014) was born and grew up in Simon’s Town, where he lived until his family were forcibly removed to Ocean View in the 1960s. An internationally acclaimed artist, today Peter Clarke’s artwork sells for astronomical amounts, but his beginnings were humble.
At the age of 15 he was working as a boat painter and cleaner by day while attending art classes at Saint Philips School in Cape Town during the evenings. His talent soon drew the attention of Dean Anderson, the head of the architectural school at UCT who bought some of Peter’s work and word of this talented young man from Simon’s Town started to spread. Mathys Bokhorst, the Director of the National Gallery, came to know about him and in 1951 Peter took part in a group exhibition at the Association of Arts Gallery in Cape Town. An offer by Maskew Miller to do book illustrations soon followed. Notwithstanding his outstanding achievements as an artist and writer, Peter Clarke was very much a community person and for 20 years he ran an art workshop for underprivileged children in Ocean View. He was also part of the Community Arts Project.
In an interview with Joline Young in 2009 he said:
I had a happy childhood. There were hard moments of course, having to endure poverty. When I think of the depression years of the 1930s and growing up when you are 13, 14, 15 and you start becoming aware of your own presence and what people had and what you don’t have and how you would have to do without certain things until you can afford it, but the good thing about those hard times is that it was all part of my education. And so you know it actually has shaped my thinking, my attitude towards other people, the reason why I take an interest in other people.
Tony Grogan
Tony Grogan is a cartoonist, illustrator and artist who was born in East London in 1940, where he matriculated at the Selborne College. He went on to study fine art at Rhodes University and also taught for eight years. Using an alias, he made strong commentary of the South African political landscape through highly critical cartoons for local newspapers. He is also noted for being one of the longest serving editorial cartoonists of the Cape Times, since 1974. Tony Grogan’s watercolours of Bo-Kaap and District 6 provide us with a visual archive of South African history, most notably Cape Town’s vanishing history, which is also the title of one of his books. Through these paintings we come to appreciate the social history of Cape Town and the often unacknowledged citizens who have been rendered invisible.
Amos Langdown
Amos Langdown was born in Plettenberg Bay on 7 May 1930 and died in Port Elizabeth in 2006. Although also a poet, he was lauded for having “maintained a balance between his own practice as an artist and his passion for teaching”. The latter saw him become a school inspector as well as teaching at the Hewat Training College in Cape Town, followed by the Dover Training College in Port Elizabeth. While studying art part-time at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, Langdown’s initial solo exhibitions saw him successfully being awarded grants by the Government and Cape Tercentenary Foundation to study overseas. His work achieved international acclaim and much of his internationally sold art is now housed at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington. Through his art he made a social commentary on the Cape Flats while also memorialising the Plettenberg Bay as the small fishing hamlet of his childhood. As with the Two women with Babies used in this exhibition, Langdown had a particular skill in capturing the extraordinary lives of ‘ordinary’ people.
He is noted to have once said
“As I dip my brush into paint, I dip it into my soul and he who cannot appreciate this, does not have a soul."
Cheslyn Brandt
Cheslyn Brandt grew up in Ocean View and says he has been painting since childhood. While working on cruise ships for ten years, he says he would “always end up drawing something to keep me happy”. However, after his partner died in 2017 he turned to his art in order to cope with his grief. Two years later he came across a song that his partner had sent him called “Can you paint all the colours of the wind?” It was then that he left his job and he has been painting professionally ever since. As an artist, Cheslyn enjoys capturing interesting people in his community, of whom Grysie is one.
Cheslyn says the following about his art:
My journey at sea and growing up in Cape Town inspires my work and allows me to surprise myself every day. I am still learning and experimenting, using different techniques, with room to grow …
Tyronne Appollis
Tyronne Appollis was born in Cape Town in 1957. He is a sculptor, visual artist, musician and poet whose work reflects the challenges of everyday life for working class people, particularly on the Cape Flats. Having trained at the now defunct Community Arts Project between 1982 and 1987, Appollis also participated in the formation of the Mitchells Plein Art Group in 1988. Appollis has won multiple awards and his artwork has appeared on the book jackets of well known authors such as Richard Rive, Alex la Guma and Ari Sitas. One of his notable community endeavours is the “Freedom of the City” painting of Bishop Tutu that he was commissioned by the City to do in 1997.
In the Linocut Mother and Child we are asked us to stop and reflect on the challenges of family life, in particular mother and child bonding, during slavery.
Albert de Jager
Albert de Jager was born in Bloemfontein on 18 August 1925. After matriculating in 1948, he studied art at the Technical College in Bloemfontein. He was the art editor of the Landbouweekblad and The Friend. He was also a music critic and a cartoonist for various newspapers and magazines. De Jager painted historical buildings, cottages and landscapes, mostly in watercolour. Not much is recorded about De Jager career as an artist, but in 1986 he is noted to have had a solo exhibition at the Atlantic Art Gallery in Cape Town.
In his mixed media drawing On Wash Day, de Jager captures the essence of communal living in Bo-Kaap. Mothers hang washing out to dry on communal washing lines, while in neighbourhood children play with carefree abandon.