‘My passion makes me good at what I do’

When I heard, five minutes into the interview, that my subject was a vegan Zulu, I just knew this story was going to be way different from any other I had ever done.
Andile Sisanda Buthelezi (17) politely declined a mouthwatering lamb pizza and I immediately realised that there was a maturity about her beyond her years.
The reason for our meeting was that London Art Merchants had just signed her up as a client. Now, if you, like me, are not sure what that means, consider that the company has among its sizeable client base, the likes of Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso. Sisanda, as she prefers to be called, is now their youngest and first African client. She is an activist at heart, a dogged opponent of prejudice and injustice. She sums herself up as a dreamer and a thinker – passionate and opinionated, often finding herself at loggerheads with the status quo.
But, where did it all begin? I asked, intrigued by the prodigy sitting opposite me.
As a Gr. 5 learner, Sisanda spent her afternoons in her mother’s office after school. When her homework was done, she fought boredom with a pencil and a piece of paper. One day, she says, she drew a picture of a dress and absent-mindedly left it behind when she went home. Fast forward a few months and Sisanda was on her way to her grandmother’s unveiling ceremony. She suddenly did a double take and complimented her mother on the stunning new dress she was wearing. As it turned out, the design came from the sketch that the young 10-year-old had forgotten on her mother’s desk. The woman instinctively knew her daughter was going to go places and urged her to develop this new-found talent.
Sisanda was later to win the admiration of her classmates when she wore her own, stunning creation to her matric farewell a few months ago. In Gr. 8, Sisanda was juggling modelling, swimming, hockey and a challenging academic programme. In spite of it all, she taught herself to shade in her sketches and the following year, her art teacher encouraged her to take visual art as a Gr. 10 subject. Winning the art trophy at the end of that year made the decision a little easier and she also decided to do a course in photography through Open Window. Being a certified photographer has helped her to capture her own, original images through a lens and use them as the subjects of her sketches.
In Gr. 11, Sisanda reluctantly moved out of the comfort zone of her pencils and ink to experiment with oils. ‘I fell in love with art after my first painting and I decided to drop physics and maths. By the end of Gr.11, I was working with all the mediums and won a laptop as the visual arts prize with a 92 per cent aggregate,’ she says. Her art and English teachers never stopped encouraging her to showcase her talent. ‘Andile, people need to see your work,’ they urged. That got her thinking. She had noticed that her peers often avoided deep, uncomfortable topics of conversation and had an annoying habit of conveniently changing the subject when it became too intense. ‘Well, if you don’t want to talk about them, I will make you see,’ she vowed. That was her motivation for opening Instagram and Facebook accounts and making her own promotional video. It was through these platforms that London Art Merchants found her and offered her the exhilarating contract.
If Sisanda was to listen to the advice of all the prophets of doom along the way, she would never have made it thus far. In the poorhouse – a starving, unrecognised talent…
‘I can’t let negative things define me − I am too busy defining myself,’ she says. ‘I have a plan. I want to do it differently. I want to do live painting and mix it with the poetry I write and the music I play on my guitar. I have had to turn down so many opportunities because of my school commitments − I am going to go all out next year. My future excites me. I am going to grind to get to where I want to be.’
* Find Sisanda’s contact details on the Herald website.