Info: Portchie is an unusual, if not unique phenomenon in South African art. He paints between 800 and 900 pieces a year and each is snapped up. Ten years ago he was a transport economist with Spoornet. He's unassuming, articulate to the point when he speaks with a staccato burst of words and just plain plucky. For Portchie is that rarest of people, a man who discovered his calling fairly late in life and then there was no holding him back. He is arguably the most successful - certainly the most prolific - contemporary artist in South Africa. There's a saying that the test of courage comes when you are in the minority, the test of tolerance comes when you are in the majority. Portchie took his courage in both hands in 1992 when he decided to stake his name on his quick and undisputed ability with a brush and canvas. Why was he so confident? " I paint universal themes, children hop-scotching, people riding bicycles, people reading - my art doesn't know any languages and this means it is equally as popular in America, Germany, the United Kingdom or South Africa," he says. "It is not difficult to understand or appreciate." But there is more to Portchie's work than an easy understandability. Now that he is widely known around the world he has an easy tolerence for others who, he concedes, may have tried so hard but have not met with his astonishing success. A painting by Portchie is always intensely colourful - he seems to see the world in terms of warm yellows, vivid blues, bright reds, intense greens. He says that part of the secret is that he uses Grumbacher acrylics - "the fines pigment of all paints in the world". What is equally true is that his equable nature seems to have no room for twilights, for half-shades or for shadow tones. For Portchie the world is a bright, cheerful place and this contagion communicates itself immediately with the viewer. It is obviously a universal appeal and Portchie has known success ever since he started painting. Now aged 38, he lives in Stellenbosch but exhibits widely primarily through Alice Art Gallery. His paintings are affordable, cheer-you-up pieces and fun. This probably explains why they are so popular.