The artist

Wiseman Ndlovu

Wiseman Ndlovu was born in 1983 and taught himself to draw in Lidgetton. He studied printmaking at the Caversham Press and sold his prints and watercolors before turning to clay, where he became one of the leading ceramic painters in KwaZulu-Natal and spent years teaching younger artists. In 2016 he came to the gallery in Florida to paint in front of American collectors. His work has been called “a triumph of sophisticated natural realism.”

In 2022 he opened his own workshop beside his home in KwaZulu-Natal. The renowned sculptor Bennet Zondo, Thabo Mbhele and Sello shape the pieces, and Wiseman paints nearly every one himself. Among his first collections there was Timbavati, after the reserve known for its white lions, whose name means the place where something sacred came down to Earth from the heavens.

Wiseman is also a pastor, and his faith runs through the work: Jonah and the whale, which he holds here, and Noah's Ark, for which he and Bennet chose the Big Five. His church stands on the same land as the kiln. When a storm brought down its temporary roof this year, collectors who bought his work helped the congregation raise the walls again.