Art is my everlasting treasure and I draw from its infinite source. My art reflects my experiences of both rural and urban life. I use it to highlight social issues that confront our being. I fuse noticed and unnoticed moments with my paint and brushes as I use colours, figures and imagination that show satire in a way that will affect your heart and lift you to any kind of feeling.
As we often miss the basic principle of firm bases, my work comments and provokes on social issues that combine effects of urban, rural, poverty and inequality.
I normally use images of underprivileged children and vulnerable women who always seem to be the victims of ill situations. I comment silently yet reach unlimited boundaries.
The main aim and motive are to amplify the lament and agony of the ignored.
I work in oils on canvas. My art is surrealistic, evoking the spiritual and creating a dialogue with the viewer. In this manner I have the freedom of fusing different objects in one body of work.
I seek to trace and translate deep shadows on the walls of my subconscious mind, shadows which turn to be my shifting dreams behind my mind and in that world resonate a great deal of mystic melody. Then art becomes an instrument to vocalize those golden forgotten songs.
Mncedi Bodlo was born at Duncan Village in East London, he grew up as a shepherd in Transkei, he used to make human and livestock figures with clay almost every day after school, he also made drawings on the rocks near the river using small white, yellow and red stones.
Mncedi grew up with a deep passion for art; he then started experimenting with water colours, painting horses and landscape on paper. Mncedi is a self-taught artist and he never attended formal training in art, he attended courses in painting and drawing.
He started working seriously as a professional artist in 1997 with oil and chalk pastel as a freelance artist since 1998 till now. Mncedi has an articulate way of portraying rural and township life. He has done numerous paintings and murals commissioned by big companies such as Metrorail, Fleet Africa, TAC, Own Haven Housing Association.
His Street Kids Series later developed into what is currently themed - “The Dream Catcher
