Dirk Meerkotter: Prominent abstract artist who also had a day job

Dirk Meerkotter, who has died in Johannesburg at the age of 95, was a prominent painter and abstract artist whose best piece of advice came from one of South Africa's most avant-garde artists, his friend Walter Battiss. He told Meerkotter to get a job with a regular salary and a decent pension so that he could paint freely without the pressure of having to sell to survive.