Portchie is an unusual if not unique phenomenon in South African contemporary art. He paints between 800 and 900 pieces a year and each is snapped up. Ten years ago he was a transport economist with Spoornet.
He's unassuming, articulate to the point when he speaks with a staccato burst of words and just plain plucky.

For Portchie is that rarest of people, a man who discovered his calling fairly late in life and then there was no holding him back. He is arguably the most successful contemporary artist in South Africa.

There's a saying that the test of courage comes when you are in the minority, the test of tolerance comes when you are in the majority. Portchie took his courage in both hands in 1992 when he decided to stake his name on his quick and undisputed ability with a brush and canvas. Why was he so confident?

"I paint universal themes; children hop-scotching, people riding bicycles, people reading - my art doesn't know any languages and this means it is equally as popular in America, Germany, the United Kingdom or South Africa," he says. "It is not difficult to understand or appreciate."

But there is more to Portchie's work than an easy understandability. Now that he is widely known around the world he has an easy tolerance for others who, he concedes, may have tried as hard but have not met with his astonishing success.

A painting by Portchie is always intensely colourful - he seems to see the world in terms of warm yellows, vivid blues, bright reds, and intense greens. He says that part of the secret is that he uses Grumbacher acrylics - "the finest pigments of all paints in the world". What is equally true is that his equable nature seems to have no room for twilights, for half-shades or for shadow tones.

For Portchie the world is a bright, cheerful place and this contagion communicates itself immediately with the viewer.

It is very obviously a universal appeal and Portchie has known success ever since he started painting. "About 10 years ago they started what was known as the Randburg Rumble," he says. "This was a son of stroll around that took you to all sorts of interesting places and I decided to put a few of my paintings on exhibition. I put nine paintings up and sold five. Then 1 put 15 up and sold nine. Then 21, with 14 sold. That gave me tremendous encouragement.

"I then started exhibiting in my flat in Cresta (a Johannesburg suburb) and a few years later I really took the plunge. I was living in nearby Windsor and I had accumulated about 100 paintings I wanted to show. I went to all my neighbours and asked them if I could use their apartments as well as mine and they all agreed. It was fantastic. I had up 100 works and everything was sold in the first night!"

Portchie says he printed flyers to promote his "in house" exhibitions and that first big showing attracted more than 500 people. It was sufficient to help him decide to become a full- time painter but now he needed a gallery, as obviously neighbours would not always be so accommodating.