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JOHN MEYER was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa in 1942. 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 presents us with strikingly real illusions, all distinctly familiar yet ultimately invented imagined archetypes rather than specific events. His most recent narrative genre, exploring the complex currents of human relationships, captivates his viewers. He has since developed these into a series of three separate but related views of the same reaction. These 'Sequential Narratives' explore the nature of intimacy between men and women. The series reflects his interest in compositional interaction rather than conventional realism and displays his traditional visual hallmark - a tight theatrical control of the painted surface.
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