Walter Sisulu University Fine Art student Mongezi Wopula connecting with our souls through emotional paintings

Lusikisiki-born Fine Art student at Walter Sisulu University Mongezi Wopulo (24), was introduced to art by his late friend in 2013 who was a painting artist. He grew up not knowing a lot about art but he then later decided to pursue a career in Fine Art. The struggle of feelings and life experience inspired his artworks.  He deals with clay painting, and for most mediums, he uses Charcoal, Acrylic paints, and pencils.

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]“I would say my Artwork is based on Emotions and realism because sometimes people fail to voice out their feelings and I believe that an artwork can never fail to express those feelings,” he explains.[/perfectpullquote]

He adds that the purpose of his emotional portraits is to connect with our souls, and you must feel something when looking at them.

Mongezi highlighted that the most challenging part as an artist is a lack of material and find a perfect way of marketing your work as not everyone understands art. “It is also easy to overcome these challenges because you can eve use waste and newspapers as materials to produce most beautiful pieces and secondly I just keep working hard learning more techniques and use social media to share my work with people, art lovers, art collectors, and buyers will just follow up and contact me as they have already started,” he says.

Curiosity is one of the things that motivates Mongezi’s artwork but also beauty and meaning will always be part of an artwork.

When he was asked what’s next for him he said:

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]“the next thing for me is to enter for available competitions, exhibitions, and my biggest dream is to have a solo exhibition and become one of the most well-known artists worldwide,” he concluded.[/perfectpullquote]