Brad Blazes Fiji Showcase 2008

Brad Blaze the Speed Painter has been drawing cartoon characters since he was about three or four years old.
 
Brad Blaze - who has visited Fiji four times already for holidays - says he’ll have a paint brush in his hand until he dies.
 
This passion, which we have at Fiji Showcase 2008 for the first time, had the crowd roaring this afternoon as the Australian artist drew the caricature of a young member of the audience, 14 year old Raijeli, and then invited her to draw his.
 
Luckily he is bald and has the loveliest face. Raijeli did her best to get Brad’s face on paper with the audience calling out suggestions to the size of his ears (the audience wanted large ears drawn on – when Brad has small-ish ears). He wanted a muscular body drawn for his caricature but Raijeli gave him a stick figure body.
 
And when Raijeli had done her bit – Brad quickly reworked the picture. Drew muscles for his arms, gave himself decent-sized ears and gave himself hair. The crowd was roaring – he had won their hearts!And the Australian artist, who said he’s favourite character to draw, is Spiderman, quickly moved on to the main part of his show – the actual speed painting. I was sitting in the audience, already impressed that this guy, who had managed to get the crowd going on his first performance in Fiji (you know, how we’re a special lot in Fiji – our own special Fijian sense of humor).

He sets up an easel with canvas already painted black. The music is pumping in the background (I take this time to look around and see families – fathers and sons, parents and children, mothers and children and a sprinkling of children on their own who had escaped the clutches of their parents and other siblings to grab the rows closest to the stage and Brad.
 
Pumping music accompanies what looks like a random splash of paint on the canvas. He has instructed the crowd to guess who he is painting. The canvas spins and then another splash of paint. The beginning of a face. The boxing gloves. Someone calls out Muhammed Ali. I spin around to see that it is a thirty-something-year-old man sitting next to a daughter and son. He is almost jumping out of his seat. Such is the power of the speed painter.
 
The spinning of the canvas, the jumping and the splashing of paint continue. I must admit I initially thought it was a painting of William Ryder until I saw the boxing gloves.
 
Spin, jump, splash until – there it was: Muhammed Ali. The painting was of the boxer during what could have been one of his reigns as three-time World Heavyweight Champion. Ali, who was in 1999 crowned "Sportsman of the Century" by Sports Illustrated and the BBC, is these days an old man suffering from Parkinson’s disease so I was surprised that even the younger members of the audience were calling out his name. I suppose we can thank TV for that.

And then sitting with Brad  after the show for an informal chat, he said he just loved to draw from a very young age. And then it just turned into him being asked to draw at events. He said he’s received no formal training and just loves his show.

"I've been drawing professionally, as a career, for about eight years now," Brad said. "It's my full time job."

He said he was privelaged to have interim Prime Minister in his audience during one of his shows and that he did a painting for him.

He says his shows get better every time and urges young people who want to make speed painting a career to practice because “the more practice you do, the better you get”.