Fanie Buys is a South African artist currently based in London. Fanie Buys was born in Gansbaai in 1993. After being shuffled through a fair range of the Garden Route socio-economic spectrum he attended the Michaelis School of Fine Art, graduating with a distinction in Studiowork in 2016. Buys was a co-recipient of the Judy Steinberg Award for Painting and the Simon Gerson Award for an exceptional body of work. Predominantly working a figurative style, Buys’ painting is a catalyst to explore representation of the human figure in a variety of media- focusing on passé press releases and gracefully aging film stars. Buys works in a figurative style considering the role of traditional portraiture in contemporary society. Using found images, AI, and unconventional subject matter: Buys considers the act of painting as a performative meditation to realise hidden, often tongue-in-cheek, meaning.