User:Tungwane/sandbox

Lucky Phatle Mashilwane (born June 07, 1992) known professionally as Punoo Mashilwane (stylized as punoo._.mashilwane) the name derived from a pedi word ‘puno’ which means harvest. Punoo is a South African fine artist, animator and graphic designer that produce surrealism artworks of an account of three friends from a remote village whose peregrination to a city transformed their lifes. He gained recognition after he exhibited at Decorex Johannesburg in 2017,held at Gallagher Convention Centre.

1992−2010: Early life and career beginnings
Punoo is born and bred at Ga-Marishane (a village in Limpopo). He started developing interest in drawing at a young age and his parents supported his interest. He credits his dressmaker mother for a wide exposure to patterns and a good foundation in design. He attended Bopedi Bapedi High School where he majored in Engineering Graphics & Design which broaden his knowledge about design and perspectives. His friends Owen, Thully, Molapyane and DaGreat who were drawn to different creative disciplines also taught him a lot. Upon his arrival to Johannesburg in 2011 while studying Media and Graphic Design at Damelin, he also joined South African Ballet Theatre, Outreach Program (later renamed Joburg Ballet) where he became a dance student until 2014. He is a huge fan of Owl City and India Arie. From 2011 to 2016 Punoo was a vegan; he became after he saw a leaked video of poultry house and read an article on meat-consumption projection.

Work
Punoo’s ballpoint drawings convey an unfolding story of three nameless friends whose 303,8 km long journey by foot to a city changed their lives. He offer little details of their appearance, mostly drawing them in silhouette form and faceless, all due to the reason that they embody and exude values, truth and vulnerabilities of his personal life. The characters carry a youthful androgynous, with shading that gets progressively darker or lighter around them. His work is sequential with great resonance to how his life is unfolding. Punoo's compositions are 2-dimensional, yet he often create an illusion of 3-D using contour lines to give suggestion of depth on some features especially when he needs to add emphasis or a realistic mood of a subject. In Sept, 2017 he started creating People+Places, a series of miniature drawing that stresses the essence of being human, in terms of interconnection with other people and environment.

Artist Style
Punoo’s artistic style is such a distinctive cute aesthetic narration that is fictional but extracts a lot from his personal odyssey to fulfilling a dream. He creates images that hinder endless positive meanings, ones that have a sensational effect on close range. He describes his work as art that social media generation can relate to, and new objects of symbolic exchange that highly expresses appreciation Punoo has voiced his admiration for Takashi Murakami, Mary Sibande, Kaws and jeff Koons

Career
In 2013, Punoo exhibited for the first time at entry for Absa L’Atelier Art Competition. He exhibited three artworks; Portrait of an unknown citizen, Embrace the unforeseen and 12th Avenue_ Alexandra which he notes now that his earliest work was so much orientated in showing his drawing ability and tweezer dexterity. After college graduation in 2015, he joined Vee Station and its clothing brand RockStarThreads as a graphic designer and later, he was hired by Reach Engage Develop, a digital marketing company for automotive brands such as Renault, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Mazda and etc. Early 2017, Punoo created the artwork “Urbanscape my friends and I are moving to” and “We are wild, life is good café” which he received positive responds for. He founded AboutFriends, a gallery that is an umbrella of his creative endeavors, and in August of the same year, he exhibited at Decorex Johannesburg at Gallagher Convention Centre. From 12 Sept to early 2018, His work was displayed at The Henry George Gallery. Punoo was selected for Design Indaba, Emerging Creatives 2018, where he exhibited at Johannesburg Simalcast at Lisof College and, 2 months later he exhibited at Absolut One Source LIVE along African Street Craft. In 2018, he joined Zara as a fashion advisor so he can learn about merchandising and trend forecasting and in early 2019, he was hired by an investor-relations company, Bastion (a company responsible for JSE Client's portfolio) as an animator.

Catalogue of Exhibited Art

 * ''Urbanscape my friends and I are moving to
 * ''Acquiring knowledge is sexy
 * ''We're wild, life is good café
 * ''Amazeballs-we should be televised
 * ''Tea
 * ''What the flowers!
 * ''Climb sweet the strawberry mountain
 * ''Untitled
 * ''En vogue, we are
 * ''Our-teddy-like-comfortable-life
 * ''PEOPLE+PLACES Series