The Passerby- an analysis

            In the painting that I have chosen to do this essay on, the theme is not immediately obvious to the person looking at the painting. You cannot see the passer-by that the title refers to, so you wonder why the artist has chosen to give it that title. However, when you look more closely at the painting, you observe that the people in the painting are looking out of the painting at you, which leads you to believe that you are looking at the painting from the passer-by's perspective. This painting was created two years after the first democratic elections in South Africa. The artist is a black South African, so one thinks that he is in fact making a comment that even after the elections there were people living in the same conditions they were in before the new South Africa was brought into being. He is showing that not much has changed.
             The painting is done in acrylic and pastels, which makes it an interesting contrast to most of the other paintings in the library, which are oil paintings. With pastels, the harshness of the lines is softened, giving the painting a more inviting feel. Also, Mthetwa has blended the different colours of the pastels, giving it a soft ambience. The use of acrylic has given definition to the vibrancy of the yard scene by highlighting where the shadows are, as well as the viciousness of the dog and the barbed wire fence. This draws our attention to the fact that although the yard scene is happy; there is an underlying sense of apprehension, as if they are saying, " What is this person walking past up to?".
             Before I saw this painting I had spent about an hour in the library looking at paintings, and although I saw some that were nice none really appealed to me enough for me to want to analyse them. I had almost given up when I looked into the Science and Engineering section and saw a picture with splashes of lime green in it. Seeing as lime green is my favourite colour, I wanted to take a closer look.