Rolling Stone gathers fame

Simon Stone: A Retrospective Exhibition spans 35 years of the well-known South African artist's work, from 1978 to 2013. A book of his collected works with text by Lloyd Pollack is available at the Standard Bank Gallery. Andrea Nagel spoke to the artist.

I started doing portraits of my parents when I was 15. When other boys were riding motorbikes and playing pool on a Saturday afternoon, I was painting.

My art career began at Michaelis School of Fine Art, UCT, where I graduated in 1976. I later continued my education in Italy. My school career was lousy and then there was awful army conscription, so I felt like my life really opened up at art school. I learned as much from my fellow students as I did from the teachers.

I studied with amazing artists like Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler [from the Handspring Puppet Company], Marlene Dumas and Philip Badenhorst, who works in the Netherlands, Nina Romm and filmmaker Michael Oblowitz, who is now working in America.

It's tough in the beginning, when you are starting out trying to sell your work, so I had to teach. Bill Ainslie had started the Art Foundation [in Saxonwold, Johannesburg] and asked me to teach there. He wanted someone who dealt with realism and figurative representation as a foil for his abstract style. It was an amazing experience. At the time [the late 1980s] it was amazing in the political situation that he had a multiracial art school. He helped a lot of black artists.

I'm inspired by life - people doing things, buildings, landscape. Painting helps me make sense of this crazy life we're living.

I am style-less. I started with photorealism in art school and went through an expressionistic phase and a red phase, but I've always had the idea that my work should be ''natural". I suppose you could call my work ''juxtaposition" - people mixed with landscapes mixed with objects and building.

I did mosaics for five years. But I've stopped that. Life's too short.

I am a South African artist primarily. I've had two London shows, but I'm mostly known here.

It's an emotional experience seeing a lot of my work together, especially when I look at my older work. It's like time travel. I connect the paintings with what was going on in my life at the time.

Some say that painting is dying out. Of course, artists like Marlene Dumas and Gerhard Richter would disagree - paintings are not going to go away.

My work lends itself to a lot of different interpretation. I've been criticised for that, but that's really just how I work. The book is about the writer's interpretations.

ALSO HAPPENING

JOHANNESBURG

MUSIC

Reunion of the Rave

When: Tomorrow at 6pm

Where: Town Hall, Newtown, 082-332-5772

EXHIBITION

Deborah Bell's Caversham Press Prints.

When: Until July 20

Where: Circa on Jellicoe Gallery, 011-768-4805

COMEDY

Parker's Comedy featuring Joe Parker and Celeste Ntuli.

When: Tomorrow at 8pm

Where: Parker's Comedy & Jive Montecasino, 011-511-0081

PERFORMANCE

In Love Again: A Musical Cabaret starring Cat Simoni.

When: Today and tomorrow at 8pm, Sunday at midday

Where: Foxwood House, Houghton, 011-486-0935

DURBAN

MUSIC

Sama-nominated Kidofdoom live, joined by Coals of Juniper.

When: Tomorrow at 8pm

Where: Live, 084-510-3107

LIFESTYLE

The Durban Airshow 2013.

When: Tomorrow at 9am

Where: Virginia Airport, 031-563-7101

CAPE TOWN

PERFORMANCE

Boy Meets Boy , set in the 1930s.

When: Tonight at 8pm, tomorrow at 2.30pm and 8pm

Where: Artscape Theatre Centre, 021-410-9838

LIFESTYLE

The Franschhoek Bastille Festival.

When: Tomorrow and Sunday at midday

Where: Town Hall, 021-876-2861 - Pearl Boshomane