Cape Town – The Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) has honoured Cape Impressionist artist Conrad Theys with an honorary doctorate in arts and design.
The renowned 78-year-old artist, who is one of the country’s top painters and one of the original Cape Impressionists, received the recognition at the Bellville Campus Sports Hall last night.
This was the start of CPUT’s graduation series taking place from December 10 to 14.
Speaking from his home in Bellville South, Theys said he was humbled to be the recipient of the doctorate.
“It wasn’t that I doubted it, but I was thinking there are so many people who should have got this, didn’t they know about them? Then I thought, well, I accept it because I thought why shouldn’t I,” he said.
Theys’s work features in galleries and collections around the world. He is a painter of landscapes, portraits and still life. Working with oil, watercolour, ink-wax, pencil, charcoal and pastel, he is best known for his Namaqualand landscapes featuring Quiver trees.
Various national and international institutions have his work in their collections including the SABC, Botswana’s National Art Museum, Life Grow and Rand Merchant Bank.
“The reason I decided to go into art is because it gave me fulfilment which I didn’t get from the teaching profession. In teaching you have to wait so long to see your results, some children even leave school early.
"But, when you make a work of art you see the result and it pleases you. I think I didn’t choose art to be my career, art chose me,” he said.
Theys credits his mother with whetting his appetite for art when she gave him a box of wax crayons when he was only three. She died soon after but his passion for painting lived on.
Born in Montague, Western Cape, he grew up in Loeriesfontein. He matriculated from Northern Paarl High School before completing his teacher training at Brighton College in Oudtshoorn in 1961.
He was on the board of Bellville Training College hostel and an adjudicator for the exams. While he does think it is easier today for students who want to pursue art as a career than it was when he started out, he thinks the competition is too fierce.
“My connection with that campus goes far back, and come to think of it, that campus is calling me back now. I was lucky in the sense that my work appealed to people, even to those who didn’t think I’m great. They still liked my work and bought it,” Theys said.