Cullinan artist dreams of opening an art gallery
“I communicate without words or needing sentences. The art speaks for itself.”
In Cullinan’s historic town there is an artist, Mol Mashiero, who lets the town live through him.
Cullinan can be seen in most of his paintings.
Not only is he a painter but also a graphic designer and a photographer.
“I fell in love with paint more than anything else. I want to explain in my paintings how Cullinan looks, feels, smells and the story it tells around every corner.”
One thing that attracted him to Cullinan is that nearly everyone knows about this town.
“You can visit England and they know about Cullinan, but when you go to Mamelodi they don’t know. I want to make the culture and art known in this area.”
He specialises in landscapes and describes his paintings as raw emotions that can be seen in simplicity.
“Cullinan is that town. When you stand at the hill. You can see that it is purple. These clouds could tell you a lot of stories. They can talk.
“I draw the miners for they dig up the diamonds and it symbolic because I want to share these diamonds seen as artistic people in the community.”
His mother instilled that hunger for art in him.
“My mom used to paint and I would watch her.”
He works with different mediums from pencil to acrylic and oil paint.
His paintings are also unique because he captures Cullinan in the olden days and in the present time.
He began drawing at the age of five years and ever since, art began his voice and a passion that infatuated his entire being.
“I began sketching when sentences were what I could speak. Then I fell in love with mixing colours.”
As a 14-year-old boy, the paintbrush would always be found in his hand or pocket and his feelings towards a blank canvas has just evolved.
“Painting to me is like releasing all my emotions on the canvas and about connection on a deeper level. I have painted with strange objects such as an iron, but in that moment it was the only way the story could be told.”
His career-highlight this far has been the first painting he ever sold and the reaction on the woman’s face when she saw and touched the painting.
“That moment made him realize he wants to have his own art gallery that must represent Cullinan in its finest way possible.
“I would have a space that captures the essence of her. Cullinan to me is a woman with a scent of Jacarandas clothed in history, but she takes care of her people and the art gallery would be like a photo album and a collection of all that she is.”
Mashiero gets goosebumps when he talks about the feeling art evokes within him.
“Every time I paint I become someone else as if I work from a different place.
“We all have our own problems and I like looking for answers in this lifelong quest or creating solutions that impacts other people as well. Starting conversations is the only way.”
