Emily Quinn in Conversation with Werner Bronkhorst
“I always say that the world is a canvas and we're just walking in it.’” - Werner Bronkhorst
Werner Bronkhorst, a South African artist now based in Australia, has gained recognition for his deeply textured landscape paintings and charcoal sketches. Going viral in 2022, he amassed a major following with his work exploring edgy themes of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, seamlessly blending these with more nuanced and familiar depictions of oceans, grass, streets, and snow. Bronkhorst uses his art to reflect on sports and activities he enjoyed as a child, offering landscapes that allow others to visualise and appreciate the beauty and tranquility of nature, particularly for those from areas lacking diverse natural surroundings.
In this exclusive MADE IN BED interview, Bronkhorst delves into the inspiration behind "Forbidden Grass," a collection influenced by his upbringing. He shares how his idealized vision of various activities on diverse landscapes creates a common perspective that is relatable to many. He shares insights into the struggles he faces as a contemporary artist with growing attention, detailing the challenges of staying innovative in a competitive field. Bronkhorst opens up about his creative process, explaining how he approaches each new piece with a fresh perspective while maintaining a cohesive vision across his collections. Through his art, Werner Bronkhorst strives to connect diverse themes under a unified vision of exploration and discovery, encouraging viewers to find beauty in both familiar and unfamiliar landscapes.
Photo Courtesy: Werner Bronkhorst.
Emily Quinn: The first question, as you may have read, you started with this fascination at a young age replicating Keith Haring's work through watercolour and the relatability with pop art. Can you delve more into the specific elements that you related to and then touch on how it built into your style today?
Werner Bronkhorst: Well, yeah. Pop art being popular art is art that really stood out to me as a young little boy, just loving the color, loving the simplicity and loving the ideology behind it, whether it was Keith Haring's work, which touched on the aspect of delving into the status quo and challenging that, or whether it was Andy Warhol's work, which was very much just rinse and repeat, but in such a beautiful way and in a way that I criticized, yet just reflected us as a society. That is what I loved as a kid, and I still love that to this day, which is exactly what I try to do.
Even though I might not be very political with my art, I definitely try and challenge how art for young people is seen and also how I can just make artworks that are new and fresh and yet touch on so many different topics of art movements throughout the ages. On a business standpoint and how I do things, it would be Ceej Hendry, who's a New York-based artist, but from Australia and actually has a South African background. It was a very interesting mix as well, which I totally respect what she does and how she does it. I'm sure you might have seen her work, but she just draws hyper realistic pencil drawings. But the way that she sells her work and shows her work and shows herself just speaks to me. And that's exactly what I try to do with my art.
Werner Bronkhorst, Good Greens, 2024. Photo Courtesy: Werner Bronkhorst.
EQ: My next question has to do with how you began. At 13 you began painting, then you had your first commission at 15; and you've also pursued film, photography, and carpentry. Being that these are formative years in your youth, did you always look at art from a creative standpoint, and when did you begin to transition it into a career?
WB: So there was a mix. As a kid, I loved painting and drawing just like every other kid. I guess I can use the quote that Picasso said that I just never stopped, and I still haven't stopped. But for me, art was not only a way of expressing myself. I think every artist has that, and it's innate. But for me, it was also the sense that people liked seeing what I did and liked seeing the skill and the time that was involved in it. Since I started, I was taking or documenting the whole process, whether it was photos or then later on with videos as well. By posting it on Instagram, people could see what happened. But it's the feedback that I really loved because I loved sports and I loved many other cultural things, but this was a one-man team thing which people praised me for. I loved the love that people had for the artworks that I made. That drove me first.
Then, of course, having commissions allowed me to have an extra income because my family... They were a working-class family, but very much a lower working-class family, which meant that money wasn't always everywhere, and I did want things, so art was a way for me to just earn an income. But I loved it because here I could be painting in my room and be forced to be alone and in my own world and explore other worlds while making some cash on the side and And that drove me to just explore the tendencies of what do people like and what do I like, and how can I mix the two to form a career?
EQ: My next question has to do with when your collection White Stripes went viral. How did you navigate that sudden attention and the expectations that came with the virility of your art? Currently you have 600,000+ followers, how did you approach that from a marketing standpoint and incorporate this into your work ethic?
WB: Luckily, it didn't just happen overnight, even though the video or one of the videos did start gaining massively big audiences. But as I mentioned, since I started using Instagram, I have been posting videos. I was used to knowing how to navigate my art on social media and how to share it and how to tell the story. I made all the mistakes back not necessarily messed up, even though looking back to those viral videos, I'm like, ‘Oh, wow, this could have been done better. That could have been done better.’ But my point would be that allowing myself to just create freely was. Social media also allowed me to just gain massive audiences. As you just said, now there's 650,000 people, even more than that, just following me, which can be a scary thought because obviously that's a big audience where you can say one wrong thing and many things can go wrong. But at the same time, it has allowed me to just connect with people in a very interesting new way where before an artist would have to exhibit in multiple big mega galleries, if not museums, to reach those kinds of audiences. Even though this is obviously not in person and therefore not as impactful, sharing these pieces and these videos or these process videos has allowed me to really gain a different audience where people know what's happening and they can see what goes into my pieces. They can understand the process and the result and love both of them. I find that truly fascinating. I don't know if I answered the question, though.
Werner Bronkhorst, Chill Out, 2023. Photo Courtesy: Werner Bronkhorst.
Werner Bronkhorst, Swell Day, 2024. Photo Courtesy: Werner Bronkhorst.
EQ: From a curiosity standpoint, do you have a preference behind the scenes for your audience and exhibition virtually, or do you like the actual interaction and travel of physical exhibitions?
WB: Look, in my previous exhibition, White Lines, which was in Sydney, there were about 500 people that came. That was very overwhelming for me because it's a lot of people. I love people and I love hugging and meeting people. But having done that with so many people, even though it's a small drop in the big pond of my overall following, that made me realize that as much as I love in-person things, being online really allows me to do whatever I want to do and share what I want. It's a curation in some ways. But that said, I love having exhibitions because not only then do people physically see what happens, but they get to meet me, but also it gives a different vibe, it gives a different aspect. You see the other people, and the numbers start making sense where even though there's a lot of likes, that really doesn't matter to me. But seeing the people actually showing up and being there and experiencing art and enjoying art and taking part in it and being immersed in this green world or white world or blue world, that is what I love seeing, because to me, as someone who loves art and is absolutely bonkers about going to exhibitions and museums and understanding more about the artist and understanding more about what they're trying to convey, for me to now be in the position where other people are experiencing that same feeling is amazing.
EQ: You mentioned the green world. I want to touch on the Forbidden Grass exhibition that you are exhibiting next week. Can you explain the process of making this specific collection? Landscapes are an ongoing theme, as well as texture. Can you explain where you got the name and idea for the collection Forbidden Grass?
WB: So being a young artist, people would think that I'm all about drugs, sex, and rock and roll, which unfortunately, is not my life. I'm a young dad, and I have big responsibilities now. So my life isn't much, isn't It wasn't just all around the taboo enjoyment of life. But I do still explore those taboo topics and the essence of naughtiness in my art. That is why each collection is named after Sex, Drugs, or Rock and Roll. This collection being related to drugs, and this collection specifically being related to weed, which is, in other words, forbidden grass. The collection name really just inspires me or allows me to work in a central theme, being forbidden grass, the thought is that I would make artworks that are all green and therefore explore topics that are green. I wouldn't normally make artwork that is related to tennis or related to golf or even soccer. But the fact that I'm in this bubble right now to make artworks just about this collection and about greenery and about peacefulness in nature has allowed me to make these artworks, which just so happens to touch on the heartstrings of so many other people who also love greenery and who also grew up in towns where you might not be surrounded by water or surrounded by snow-filled mountains.
In this collection, the real inspiration for this collection came about that I grew up in South Africa. I grew up in Pretoria, mostly. It's a city that is pretty big. There's about a million people. But we don't have any water around us. It's six hours from the nearest ocean. We don't have any snow around us. It's about 4 hours from the nearest mountain where it might snow. We don't have big high skyscrapers or massively big roads. These are the three collections that I have touched on and what I did do a lot in my childhood was play sports and go on hikes and be surrounded by nature. That's why this collection touches on all of these topics, which is why it truly is a personal collection. It's one that I painted out of my love for these sports and these things. But that's why it's called Forbidden Grass. It keeps it a little bit edgy, and I think that people enjoy the naughty aspect to it.
Werner Bronkhorst, Rothcourt, 2024. Photo Courtesy: Werner Bronkhorst.
EQ: That is so fascinating because at first glance, it's just beautiful scenery. And then there's so much underlying storytelling behind it. Excitingly, I know you just opened your first studio and I assume you created these works there. With that huge milestone, has this changed your workflow or your experimentation with your overall creative output?
WB: Yeah. So it's been a year that I've been in the studio where I work at, which I call the Lab. And that's where I cook up all of these artworks, all of these drugs, because I'm a dealer, and therefore a drug dealer. So I have been working there for a year now, and it really has allowed me to not only work on bigger projects, because this is a space with two floors. It has allowed me to work on bigger canvases which big artworks truly do just make a massive impact on people when they see it in person. That has allowed me to just advance the projects that I can work on and the things that I can take on because working with such a thick paint, it takes ages to dry, which normally would therefore mean that I'd either have to work on really small artworks or just have to wait a really long time, which means I can't just make a whole collection.
But this now is only as a result of my first little studio, which was my room. That was when I worked in South Africa as a little teenager. My room was truly my studio. I painted all of my walls, tried to keep it as creative as possible. The reason I worked on really small paintings when I started out was because I was limited by space. I was working at school, I was working at friends' houses or at my own house, which meant that I had to take my artworks everywhere that I went. Working with tiny little watercolor paintings to now working with massive artworks, but using that same skill is personally fascinating to me.
Werner Bronkhorst, Ride the Wave, 2023. Photo Courtesy: Werner Bronkhorst.
Werner Bronkhorst, Need Assets For Aston, 2024. Photo Courtesy: Werner Bronkhorst.
EQ: Jumping to the final question, just wrapping it all together. You are so young, and you're still growing. Where do you see yourself post Forbidden Grasses? Do you see yourself continuing on this path or starting a whole new route?
WB: So it's a mixed question because I do have multiple styles. I have my charcoal drawings, which are pretty much large scale with writing all over them, which is completely different to the paintings that I do, which maybe uses texture. Even in that style, as you've seen, every collection is very much different in the colors that are used, in the people that are painted, in the scenery that is portrayed, or even the ideology behind the whole collection. Everything is very much different, but it's all connected by one central theme of exploring the world. I'm trying to explore all of these different canvases, and I'm trying to explore the canvas as a whole.
Where I see this going is that I definitely want to still make furniture, and I do design furniture on the side, and we have been discussing starting a company of making furniture, but that would be more as me just designing pieces, and that's very separate to my art. I have plans for exhibitions up until 2027, so I definitely see myself exploring multiple different themes, even though I've only done snow and streetscapes and now grass landscapes. There's still going to be desert scenery. There's going to be a water collection at the end of this year for New York. There's going to be an air collection next year. So it's all growing, but it's all around the theme of just exploring the world with these tiny little characters that are reflecting us as a human society in this world.
Thank you to Werner Bronkhorst on behalf of MADE IN BED.
If you would like to find out more about Werner Bronkhorst, visit his website or Instagram.
Emily Quinn
Contributing Writer & Social Media Manager, MADE IN BED