He is a self-taught artist (now full-time) and has been painting for the past 23 years, his preference being acrylics.
Van Rensburg is also a part-time newspaper cartoonist and draws a weekly cartoon strip for two national magazines. He has been living in Cape Town since 1987 with his family.
He describes his art as: ‘A blend of fantasy, playfulness and simplicity’. He explains: ‘I’m an expressionist at heart and search for expressiveness by means of exaggeration and distortion of line and colour. I don’t like to paint the normal, ordinary, known world. My world on canvas is re-arranged by means of squashing, twisting and exaggeration of scale, sudden changes of size or – in terms of colour – heightening of contrast and sometimes violent brush and drawing strokes.
‘The purpose of my art is to reach a certain form: one does not necessarily look for an elegant effect, but rather for a general shape to satisfy the inner impulse. When I start with a painting I do not always know what my destination is, but I recognise it immediately when I reach it.'

July/August 2010 Issue

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