STEVE BIKO

Gavin Rain is best known for his pointillist paintings that combine mathematics and a love for analogue photography. He developed his unique painting style in 2003 and are known for his op-art representations of iconic figures from South Africa and abroad. In an interview with Andrew Lamprecht (2018:76) he explained his concept as follows: “The idea – that people should step back and think about things in themselves – was formulated before the art. I wanted the art to be a vehicle that makes you physically step back in order to experience the painting.” Reference must also be made to his interest in mathematics when talking about Rain’s artworks. For Gavin (Lambrecht 2015:80) “…art and science are trying to do the same thing – they are trying to take you into an area of the unknown and make you feel comfortable with being there.”

Gavin Rain (2020:1) explained his process of painting as follows: “Very slowly. There are a lot of steps. I’ll try simplifying it. I start with an image, either a rough sketch or a photograph. Like you’ll find in a woodcut, I convert gradients to alternating light and dark areas. The bigger the circles, the less white canvas shows through, the darker the area overall… My initial paintings were basically just 8-layer woodcuts. Then I wanted to add more colour, so now there’s an extra step – each dot is like a mini-woodcut, consisting of 5 layers or so. From a distance your eye puts these 5 colours together and you get a resulting colour – a merged colour. Yes, I could just paint one colour per dot and achieve a similar result, but part of my message for the work is in the close-up aesthetic. Stuff is interesting from close. Our lives have a lot of texture/noise. Then we step back, and we see the influence of people and things in our lives – the things that shaped us. I’d like to try echoing that in my work if I can. So, each dot is a different size (like the woodcut) and a different colour. Combining these two techniques creates the image.”

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