WATCH: SA artist Kagiso Pat Mautloa – ‘I’ll paint up to the last mark I can make in my life’

This video is part of TimesLIVE's “On Shift” – a 10-part video series proudly brought to you by 1Life Insurance. Every Monday until the end of May, watch exclusive videos giving unusual insight into the lives and perspectives of people working in interesting professions in South Africa.

For many, the idea of being a full-time artist remains but a dream. For Kagiso Pat Mautloa, it has been a reality for the past four decades. A famous South African painter and sculptor, he aims to create works that raise awareness and get people thinking.

Some of Mautloa's significant works are dotted around Johannesburg. A heavy rock bound in wire stands solemnly outside Johannesburg Central police station – the site of many deaths in custody during apartheid – and his cascade of pick-axes and wheelbarrows tumbles into the atrium at Johannesburg's main Standard Bank branch, representing the "pain to labour" on which the bank is built.

To be an artist is not easy, especially when confronting society's common opinion of artists. We are, according to Mautloa, raised in a society where "art is not [considered] a profession". To this, he responds: "Of all what you have and see, be it structure, car or camera, [it's] got to go through the hands of a creative person, who is an artist." In short, we would have nothing if it weren't for artists.

Having left a corporate job, Mautloa compares the capitalist concept of "job satisfaction" with that of an artist, whose goals are not static. As an artist, "you keep reinventing yourself all the time".

Based in the smoky labyrinth of Fordsburg, at the Bag Factory Artist Studios, Mautloa does not consider what he does a job – rather, it is a lifestyle. For one, there is no retirement.

"You paint up to the last mark you can ever make in your life," he says, adding that he would only put down his paintbrush once he has created a work whose "message stays forever".

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