​Contemporary South African Art

Van Rensburg, Paul

Article credits to http://www.bidorbuy.co.za



Paul van Rensburg is a prominent South African artist who specializes in impressionist oil paintings. He paints alla prima using brushes, knives and his fingers as tools. The end result is a very distinctive style, peculiar to the artist.

Paul was born in 1963 in the small town of Queenstown in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. After completing his schooling at Queens College, he settled in Cape Town where he studied art under the supervision of Master watercolour artist, the late Mr. Rob Robeck.                 

He later moved to Johannesburg where he soon became renowned as a decorative airbrush artist in the automotive, motor cycle and boating industries. In 1986, however, he literally graduated to bigger things when he seized an opportunity to establish an aircraft revamp centre.

From very humble beginnings, he succeeded, within the short space of ten years, in growing the company to the third largest corporate jet revamp centre in the world.

Having reached the pinnacle of success at the tender age of 32, Paul could afford to retire from the rat race when most ordinary mortals had barely started out yet. In 1996, he moved back to his roots in the Eastern Cape and established himself as a professional artist in the tranquil city of Port Elizabeth.
              
To date, he has held 87 successful exhibitions throughout the country, has completed various commissions and has been tutoring in his Port Elizabeth studio. In addition to selling his paintings in South Africa, he also deals with international clientele.

           
As regards his career as an artist, Paul's passion is to produce art that is pleasing to the eye and uplifting to the soul, not for any other reason that he has to. He has expressed the wish that his clients will derive many years of pleasure from his work, at least in small part as much as he enjoys producing it.

After years of mass producing art in various styles and forms to cater for the trends of the day, Paul presently finds himself at a stage in his career where he tends to indulge himself by being taken up into the reality of the creative process, regardless of the end result. He has a passion for impasto painting as it holds a particular appeal to his senses.