Tragicomedy is Peter van Straten. Few contemporary South African painters have managed to combine such painfully poignant, personal truths with the outrageous misfortune and hilarity of the human conundrum, by magnifying the foibles and follies of brave, clueless protagonists in grave, forbidding landscapes. Van Straten’s socio-political farces avoid overt finger-pointing, and so delve into the heart of what it is to be human. He investigates paradoxes: futility and hubris; creativity and destruction; design and coincidence; indifference and longing, and all from the very personal stance of a bemused yet defiant soul assaulted by the complex stimuli that constitute life. Van Straten’s colour palette evokes a sentiment reminiscent of the Dutch Golden Age of painting with a strong lacquer finish.