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Porcelain
The fragility of playfulness — embodied in colour and mark.
This painting embodies the fragility of playfulness.
Request to buyStudio of Jako Pretorius
Fragments of the human condition.
Mixed media works that hold grief and triumph in the same frame — the fragmented, the faithful, the still-becoming.
Available Originals
For private collections.
Six featured works currently held in the studio. Each is available for purchase or private viewing by appointment in Yzerfontein, Cape Town. Explore the full collection when you are ready to see all eighteen.
Collection
New World Disorder
This series explores the human condition midst contemporary challenges of existence, spirituality and the psyche.
Grow Slowly
Patience as practice — the discipline of becoming without forcing the bloom.
An ode to slow transformation. The work refuses the urgency of instant change and honours the quiet, uneven pace at which a self — like a garden — actually grows.
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The day I had a revelation
Fragmented pieces that hold together because of it, not in spite of it.
A meditation on the fragmented nature of being human and the quiet catharsis of finally arriving at an important realisation. The work assembles disparate pieces — colour, mark, gesture — into something that holds together not in spite of its fragmentation, but because of it. Sometimes clarity comes not as a clean answer, but as the moment all the broken parts agree.
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Resurrection
Grief and triumph in the same frame — suffering does not have the final word.
A celebration of victory over death — of the moment when what was buried rises again. Resurrection meditates on the central promise at the heart of the Christian faith: that suffering does not have the final word. The work holds grief and triumph in the same frame, refusing to let one cancel the other.
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The flowers are still there
No matter how hard life gets, the flowers are still there — if you look.
The result of research undertaken during the artist's final year at the University of South Africa, this painting stands as a reminder that no matter how hard life gets, the flowers are still there — if you look. The fragmented figure, holding a single bloom in an open hand, sits among soft pastels and half-drawn flowers that surround the work like quiet evidence. A study in resilience and the discipline of seeing what remains.
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Faithful & True
Addiction, grief, and mourning — all carried by faith.
This painting encompasses fragments of addiction, grief, sorrow, anger, and mourning — all carried by faith. It is not a complaint or a cry for help; it is vulnerability embodied and reclamation in action. A celebration of faith through struggle and suffering.
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ENDGAME
New World Disorder — play and catastrophe occupy the same room.
Part of the New World Disorder collection, Endgame meditates on modern existential dread — the slow unraveling of interconnected global systems and the political instability that shadows daily life. The horse, fragmented and adorned with strange offerings, becomes a reluctant witness to a collapsing order. Almost as if play and catastrophe occupy the same room.
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Synesthesia
Where sound and sight refuse to stay separate.
A reminiscence of the beauty and movement of music and colour, tapping into multidimensionality to depict the artist's lived experience with synesthesia. The horse — flowering, perched at a piano — becomes the body that music makes when sound and sight refuse to stay separate. Cloud, piano, bloom, and stripe occupy the same scene because, in the artist's experience, they always have.
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Animal at Heart
The creature self that survives beneath every polished surface.
A portrait of the instinctive self — the part that remains when performance falls away. Colour and mark chase something raw, ungoverned, and deeply alive at the centre of the figure.
Request to buyContinue into the complete collection, including Shadows of Self and Studio Clearance.
View all eighteen originalsSeries
Shadows of Self
Anima
The inner feminine — instinct, feeling, and the life beneath the surface.
A meditation on the anima — the archetypal inner feminine within the psyche. Fragmented colour and figure hold the tension between vulnerability and strength, between what is felt and what is shown.
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Animus
The inner masculine — reason, will, and the structure beneath feeling.
A companion to Anima, this work explores the animus — the archetypal inner masculine. Mark, gesture, and fractured form speak to the forces that organise, protect, and sometimes constrain the inner life.
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Studio Clearance
In celebration of new chapters! Same quality, more affordable.
Vigilante
Justice turned inward — the self that polices its own wounds.
An exploration of the vigilante impulse within — the part of the psyche that takes justice into its own hands when the world will not. Fragmented form and restless colour hold anger, protection, and moral certainty in the same frame.
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I'm Good
The sentence we say when we are not — performance as survival.
A study in the small lie that keeps us moving. The work holds the gap between what is spoken and what is felt — the cheerful surface and the weight it was built to conceal.
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Finally Fearless
The moment fear loosens its grip — not without scars, but unbowed.
A celebration of arrival after a long season of dread. The figure stands in colour that no longer apologises — evidence that fear can be outlived, if not entirely erased.
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OK Fine
Resignation dressed as agreement — the compromise that costs more than it saves.
A quiet, compact work about the agreements we make with ourselves when we are too tired to fight. OK Fine holds the humour and the grief of settling — and the strange freedom that sometimes follows.
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Adam
What are you at ease with that you know you shouldn't be?
A contemporary reflection on the dangers of complacency and disobedience. Even as the fate of mankind is forever changed and his world turned upside down, Adam is at ease. The painting holds up an uncomfortable mirror and asks the viewer a question that doesn't let go: what are you at ease with in your life that you know you shouldn't be?
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Familiar Faces Part 1
Color is a familiarity shared by all humans. This tiny treasure celebrates the relationship between humans and color.
Sold — inquire
Sold
Familiar Faces Part 2
Embrace your inner colour-loving self!
Color is a familiarity shared by all humans. This tiny treasure celebrates the relationship between humans and color.
Sold — inquireTwo Ways to Encounter the Work
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Immersive
The Virtual Gallery
Walk through a curated three-dimensional space where the canvases breathe. A slow, contemplative encounter.
Take Home
The Print Shop
Limited-edition prints and signed editions, hand-selected from the studio. Ships within South Africa.
Immersive encounter
Movement is imperative
Scroll through the fragments — click any painting to view it in full.
Back to collection
Enter through the wound.
The work begins in rupture: fractured figures, restless colour, and the private architecture of the psyche.
Keep moving through the maze.
Each canvas holds a projection of psyche in a captured moment.
Embrace awareness.
Be aware of your shadows — love them, and they will reveal light.
Once enemies, now friends.
These paintings are my shadows — the parts I learned to live with, not erase.
The Artist
OKAJJako Pretorius.
Mixed media paintings exploring the intersection of human experience and the fragility of psyche — the shadow corners, the suppressed, the inherited.
Biography
Jako Pretorius (b. 1994, South Africa), known professionally as OKAJ, is a mixed media artist based on the West Coast. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Visual Multimedia Arts from the University of South Africa (UNISA, 2025).
Before fully dedicating himself to art, OKAJ spent a decade in demanding manual labour roles. He began formal art studies in 2021, which confirmed what he had long suspected was his calling. The discipline, attention, and physical endurance of that earlier life remain visible in his practice — in the layered, worked surfaces of his canvases and in the patient willingness to keep returning to difficult subject matter. His paintings explore the inner architecture of the psyche — the shadow self, the suppressed memory, the acceptance of faith, and navigation of addiction, trauma and survival.
Full biography & CV →Artist Statement
My practice explores the intersection of human experience and the fragility of psyche — delving into the relationship between mind, body and soul, often focusing on the shadow aspects of the psyche. My new body of works heavily emphasises cubist-like shapes and fragmented elements, which speak to the colourful and rich diversity of one's psyche.
An inner realm greatly unexplored — unfamiliar in the most familiar ways.
We assume we know ourselves, yet there are parts of ourselves that we actively avoid — corners within our psyche that contain memories we don't want to remember, things we regret saying or doing, faces of people we once loved and lost.
The psyche, and your shadow self — the self that feels the weight of your suppressed memories and emotions — play active roles in our behaviour towards the world outside of us.
These artworks celebrate the psyche, and serve as commentary on my lived experience with faith, addiction, trauma, and victory.
Curriculum Vitæ
Exhibition history.
- Tiny Treasures 2026
- First Thursdays at Tevolution 2026
- UNDERCURRENTS 2026
- Selected Work 2026
- Shadows Of Self 2025
Buying Art
Common questions.
- Where can I buy original art in Cape Town?
- Buy directly from Studio OKAJ in Yzerfontein, Cape Town. Eighteen original mixed media paintings are currently available. Works are also stocked at Hout Bay Gallery and Art Haus Sea Point.
- How much do OKAJ paintings cost?
- Original paintings range from R 10,000 to R 24,000. Limited-edition prints start at R 250 in the Print Shop.
- Can I visit the studio?
- Yes — private viewings in Yzerfontein are available by appointment. Email okaj@studio.okaj.co.za or call +27 63 061 5589.
- Do you ship internationally?
- Original paintings can ship within South Africa and internationally — shipping is quoted per work. Prints ship within South Africa only and dispatch within 24–48 hours.
- Do you accept commissions?
- Yes, on a limited basis. Commissioned originals are priced by size — get an instant estimate at the Commission Calculator.
Get in Touch
In conversation.
For inquiries about available works, commissions, exhibitions, or to arrange a studio visit — please reach out directly. Most messages receive a reply within two days.
Studio
Yzerfontein West Coast, Cape Town South Africa
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