David Ras' talent is one that is difficult to define as a singular concept. His brush strokes, open compositions and the fluid light and movement of his work may define him as an impressionist, yet the wisdom of  his years brings to his art an unique touch of Realism. 

Taking on the challenge of being a professional artist only in his mid-fifties, Ras brings to his canvas an understanding of life that can not but grab one's attention.

While his first love is for portraiture and pastel, this versatile visual artist often explores the vastness of both land and seascape in mediums such as charcoal, pencil and oil. His love for Africa, its people and its beauty is apparent, as is Ras' fascination with the human face. These inspire his imagination, as he finds an inscrutable enchantment with that which the artist can not quite understand - the emotion that lies behind simple gestures, a tilt of the head or the shape of a brow...

Born in Johannesburg in 1942, David Ras spent part of his childhood among the children of the Khoi people near Barkley West in South Africa’s Northern Cape Province. From this stems his deep affinity with the West Coast. This remote corner of the world is scenic with whitewashed villages and fishing boats, yet daunting with wilderness sprawling and scorched and dotted with gazelle grazing in the endless haze of heat mirage.

To Ras, however, the real beauty of this land wedged between Kimberley and  Namaqualand lies with its people. In their eyes, in their laughter and banter and their demeanor of humble and quiet acquiescence, he says, lie a thousand portraits, a thousand stories waiting to be brought to canvass and to be told to the world.

 Although David Ras’ phenomenal talent was clear from a very young age, he only made the fine arts his vocation as recently as 1996 when he resigned as chief draftsman at a major South African corporation. He stresses, however, that this was not the onset of retirement, but indeed the start of a new career – one that would, within the space of just a few years, put his work on permanent exhibition in no fewer than six galleries throughout the country.

Soon, he says, these same galleries will display the faces and places, the beauty and simplicity and unreserved candor of the people of Namaqualand and Goegap, the Great Karoo and the Roggeveld …

This is Ras’ aim; to visit Koiingnaas and Nababeep and Kuboes dead south of Ai-Ais on South Africa’s west coast where live the Khoi and the San of his childhood, they of the thousand portraits, of the stories untold and uncounted. They, these earliest inhabitants of Africa’s south.

Ras regrets his late start as full-time artist, but explains that his responsibilities as a family man had to take precedence. Life as an artist in South Africa, he says, is almost synonymous with financial insecurity.

He notes the irony in the fact that a large portion of South Africans historically hail from European countries like Holland, Germany and France – great ‘art countries’, he calls them:

“We have the fine arts in our blood,” he says, “yet, in this country, sport is regarded as far more important in our education system.”