A Cape Town born artist with more than 100 bonsai trees in his collection recently marked his 80th birthday with an exhibition.

Herman Groenewald (80), who was born in 1946, celebrated his milestone birthday with a display of his bonsai trees and artworks at Stone Lantern Bonsai Nursery in Joostenberg Vlakte – his third show at the nursery.

Bonsai, according to Google, is the traditional Japanese art of cultivating, trimming, and shaping miniature trees in shallow containers to mimic the aesthetic scale and shape of full-sized trees in nature.

Studies

As a young man, Groenewald studied at the Cape Town Art School in Green Point in his twenties, and as a student was taught by Stanley Pinker and Kevin Atkinson. Later on, he took a commercial art course at the Cape Technicon, however, he chose not to pursue that path.

His first exhibition, in 1980, was a great success, and he continued to exhibit in the years that followed. He also joined Galvin and Sales Printing Company as an apprentice lithographer, qualified, and spent 17 years in the printing industry.

He then changed careers to makeup artistry and taught the subject at college until he retired at the age of 63.

Through all of these changes, one practice stayed constant. Groenewald has worked with bonsai since 1971, and the craft led to his three exhibitions at Stone Lantern Bonsai Nursery, the most recent coincided with his 80th birthday on Saturday 24 October.

ALSO READ: Mosselbank River Conservation Team wins national wetlands award