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In the painting that I have chosen to do this essay on, the theme is not immediately obvious to the person looking at the painting. You cannot see the passer-by that the title refers to, so you wonder why the artist has chosen to give it that title. However, when you look more closely at the painting, you observe that the people in the painting are looking out of the painting at you, which leads you to believe that you are looking at the painting from the passer-by’s perspective. This painting was created two years after the first democratic elections in South Africa. The artist is a black South African, so one thinks that he is in fact making a comment that even after the elections there were people living in the same conditions they were in before the new South Africa was brought into being. He is showing that not much has changed. The painting is done in acrylic and pastels, which makes it an interesting contrast to most of the other paintings in the library, which are oil paintings. With pastels, the harshness of the lines is softened, giving the painting a more inviting feel. Also, Mthetwa has blended the different colours of the pastels, giving it a soft ambience. The use of acrylic has given definition to the vi