A number of individual creative enterprises emerged towards the end of the 1980s, especially among young artists. Painted wooden birds and animals were brought in by Alpheus Ndogwane. They were colourful and often humorous, and sold well at Christmas. He works from a shack and sells to the African Art Centre and the Natal Society of Arts Gallery, and his wife often sells his work in the precincts of Durban's Workshop complex, a tourist route.

Another young artist, Timothy Mlambo has taken his craft to a fantastic and most imaginative art form. His carved and brilliantly painted animals are strange, fantastic and sometimes menacing. More recently he has started making fascinating mobiles with every kind of animal, insect and bird.

As the Art Centre has seen so often, creative potential has been sparked by just one person. In Mlambo's case the person was Peter Engblom, on whose sugar farm he worked.

Bethwel Mahlaba makes a living with small wood carvings, perhaps not as original as the others. But his skills are put to saleable pieces ranging from snails, mice, owls - which are popular - ducks which can be wheeled about and a variety of other birds. His jointed puppets are interesting and well constructed.

These men, through their creativity and hard work, manage to make a steady if small living.

If I were asked to single out artists and crafts people of the 1980s for special mention, who would I choose? Derrick Nxumalo, Mziwakhe Mbatha, Henry Mshololo, Bheki Myeni or Sizakele Mchunu?

Or would it be Magojo - directed to the Art Centre with a scrap of paper addressed to 'Miss Jo' from 'Dube, Petrol Attendant' - who unrolled a detailed pictorial map of his home area in Umzimkulu, showing a meticulous ink and colour drawing of every railway route, road, path, school, church, petrol station and cluster of huts.

All of these artists, and others, have been recognised to a greater or lesser extent. None of them has had any formal training. From the names I have mentioned it might seem that I have a strong bias towards artists who have no formal art training. This is not true, for we have seen the development of those from Rorke's Drift and other art institutions. But it was in the 1980s that the often imaginative artistic expression of the untutored became properly recognised.