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I once considered putting on my business card simply the word: 'artist'. This seems to define me better than writer or photographer or anything else. An artist can after all be an artist with words, or flowers, the way you make love, the way your eyes see things that no one else sees.

Where does this artistic blood come from, if it comes from anywhere at all? The answer is that it probably comes from one man: Tinus de Jongh, my great great grandfather. Gabriel Cornelis de Jongh was his son, also a famous artist, and my father's mother's brother (my great uncle). My father demonstrates that same artistic streak in gardens and to some extent in the way he has designed and built complexes such as Waverley Park in Bloemfontein. Casey van der Leek, my brother has continued the painting tradition, while I abandoned my sketching when I was a teenager and put my efforts into sport (triathlon) and to some extent into writing. I fancied myself at various times as a lawyer, a professional sportsman, a property developer and entrepreneur. I only took on the idea of writing freelance as a credible way to earn a living when I was based in Ilsan, Seoul, in 2005.

I have dabbled in art, and sold something like a dozen pictures. I've sold more framed photographs since I started on that in 2006/2007/. Last yearI held my first exhibition. It was a success in terms of the number of people that attended, and that I managed a small profit despite some hefty overheads.

While the artist's sensitivity is a skill and a talent at times, it can also be a curse. hence the obsessive compulsive coverage you see of the unfolding crisis of our time. Who feels these slights against the planet and all its creatures more than the world's artists?

I don't believe the way we have been living has been good for us. I think a slower pace, and a world that is not geared towards 'growth' is more sensible. Unfortunately, it is late in the day to be thinking about 'sustainability'. In the same way we have experienced 'load shedding' in South Africa, due to a lack of capacity in the country's electricity networks, so too the Earth lacks capacity to provide energy to all of its human users. To reach a sustainable level, unfortunately, we will need a mass culling of our species. We are entering this austere period right now.

Is it possible that we can continue to live happy and purpose-filled lives? Of course. But to do so consciously and conscientiously will mean abandoning many of our bad and greedy habits. We will need to consume and demand less. We will need to learn to be better neighbours, and learn better manners. We will also have to find new ways of earning a living. Making useful things, adding things or services that are of real value to a community. Think you can do that?

It occurs to me that the artist can play a valuable role in preparing and painting pictures for those less imaginative and more distracted among us. The artist may be one of the first and most important agents of change, but obviously the extent to which each artist can change, depends on their craft, the extent to which they tap into or stand outside of the reigning zeitgeist. This is a dilemma. To what extent does the artist become the society he or she lives in, and to what extent does the artist boldly and coldly go alone into a world that requires him to leave the present world, and its contrived circumstances and situations (delusions) behind?

This is the cost, the cross, an artist has to decide to bear. But embedded in the chaos of the universe, with all its fire and destructivity, are the flames of creativity and magic. And this is where I warm myself, and offer a few sparks of my inspiration to the writhing masses that glint beyond revolving world's that you know only as two green irises.