South African artist John Kramer with his painting of a general dealer store S. Bekker, Hermanus  (oil on canvas 2008)

"I am endlessly fascinated by the South African small town especially in the Western Cape and Karoo.

In the early 1970's I began to record  the shop-fronts, corner cafe's, bioscopes and general dealer stores in my hometown Worcester with my 35mm camera, fearing they may soon disappear. The supermarket was coming to town. Television was still to make its presence felt. I wanted to hold onto the memory.

Trying to establish my voice as a painter and searching for a subject I realised that these ordinary buildings that I had grown up with meshed with my idea of doing something essentially South African. This idea clarified after my first overseas trip to Europe in 1974. On my return I suddenly realised how bizarre and extraordinary the local townscape was.  Influenced by the neo or photo-realism movement at the time I began to use my photos as a subject for my deadpan realist works. 

I try and create paintings that have an intensity about them. I am told my images seem frozen, eerie, surreal. What makes them so is the absence of living beings which is deliberate and draws attention to the buildings themselves. These facades become a kind of portrait. I want the viewer to concentrate on the man-made details, advertisments and lettering. The strong light and shadow that is so typical of the Western Cape is emphasized casting  shadows, texture and patterns over the forms of the structure.

I  comment on a particular kind of building which expresses something of the people who created it or who live and work in it, but who, themselves, are not conscious of the image which it projects.

Over the years my style of painting has loosened up considerably with more emphasis on brushstrokes and paint texture as opposed to my earlier work which tended to be harder and flatter and more hyperrealistic - I still remain a committed realist. This for me, was the only approach that could convey the message I wanted to put across. With realism, you have to be calculated - you can't just work from the heart or the imagination - because the weight of every element counts.  My aim, ultimately, is to create paintings that comment about a certain place that existed at a specific and unique moment in time".

Image Top: The artist, John Kramer in his studio with S. Bekker, Algemene Handelaar, Hermanus.

Images left to right: Lou-Anns butchery, Riversdale, J.H.B. Harding, Riebeek East and Pep Stores, Worcester.

 All oil on linen canvas. View more paintings by John Kramer