Pretoria self-taught artist, Percy Maimela (30), discovered his love for art by accident. While working at a retail store in 2004, he walked into the storage room and found some salt spilled on the floor.

He says he had a light bulb moment: “The salt was white and the floor was dark. I had 30 minutes of free time so I decided to use the salt and dark floor as two different colours to make a painting on the floor.” This is how he coined what he calls Ground Art. Percy, who now works full-time as an artist, says he uses salt, sugar and maize, and gets commissioned to “paint” outside malls and on the streets of his hood in Mabopane.

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Percy also does pencil drawings on commission. “I feel like I spent my whole life doing what I’m not passionate about, when I was a packer at a retail store and a field marketer. This is a God-given gift, my man, that’s how I feel about it. I have decided to turn this into my 9 to 5 because I love creating my art pieces.”

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Below are some of Percy’s artworks.