franco.is

Francois Smit is not famous. Many have seen his work but few will recognize his name. He has quietly been producing an image a week for the Sunday Independent over the past 15 years. Every Sunday his images were viewed by 179 000 South Africans (the total estimated readership of the paper) If newspapers are a numbers game then there are other numbers that are important in understanding his work:…

By Anne Taylor, Rhodes Journalism ReviewFrancois Smit is an artist, designer and illustrator. Many readers will recognise his distinctive illustrations from The Sunday Independent , which carried his work since its launch in 1995 until April 2010. During this time he produced around 800 works for the paper. Critic Mary Corrigall likens Smit to a cunning journalist with a "talent for capturing the essence of a story and building it…

I have been looking at the art of Francois since 1986. That equals twenty years of aesthetic scrutiny, twenty years of professional admiration, and twenty years of artistic fascination. And twenty years later, there is no doubt that Francois is widely respected for his formidable imagination, skill and artistic rigor, and especially for his idiosyncratic pathos. All these qualities are compellingly obvious in the works on show here. But upon…

A man thrashes about in murky water hoping to stave off death by drowning, while all who surround him ignore his suffering. Entitled Walking on Water (April 2 2005), this is the manner in which graphic artist Fran?ois Smit visually translates a story Edwin Cameron has written about the stigma around Aids. Unlike the words of the story that once accompanied this harrowing image, which tend to filter through the…

On the eve of his first solo exhibition, we bring you the life and times of Francois Smit, the artist behind the Dispatches illustrations these past ten years. Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour... Ah, the dominee loved the admonitions of apostle Peter. Preaching the devil's name always filled his voice with power and he could feel…

HB: How did you meet Francois? vdM: He was a student of Fine Art, and I was a lecturer in Fine Art. That was 20 years ago, in Port Elizabeth, and from the very first moment, he made a big impression on me. I those early years Francois spoke in a very distinctive Kakamas Afrikaans that is impossible to translate; even into mainstream Afrikaans! Even as a young art student…

Francois' art has always been driven by visual simplicity. His art is simple, but never simplistic. He distills and refines colour to within exceptionally fine degrees, and his work is therefore never achromatic (without colour). Upon closer inspection, a work such as this abounds with extremely muted, yet fine, variations of complimentary colour, the subtlest interactions of warm and cool hues, and subtlest tonal modulations. It is this quality of…