This February, Blue Mountains artist, Bernd Jansons, is looking forward to his debut exhibition at Galerie Gora in Montreal, Canada. At almost the same time on the other side of the planet, more of Bernd’s work goes on display in a solo exhibition at the Event Horizon Gallery in Katoomba. The exhibition is the first of a series of exciting and innovative shows of contemporary art by local Blue Mountains artists from February through to December.

Until a few years ago, Bernd lectured at the University of Western Sydney, but in 2007 he left his “day job” to devote himself full-time to art. With a life-long interest in art and photography, he had stumbled across the new media of digital art, or digital painting as he prefers to call it. Starting with some sort of source material, such as a photo he has taken or a sketch he has scanned into his computer, he transforms this into a new image through hundreds of discrete manipulations of form, colour and texture. The results are an extraordinary and unique mix of 21st century abstract, semi-abstract and figurative “paintings” heavily influenced by the expressionist movement of the early 20th century.

As well as exhibiting at several galleries in the Blue Mountains, Bernd has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in Wollongong, Sydney and Melbourne, and in Guangzhou, China. His works have found homes throughout Australia and in North America. In this current exhibition, he displays both works on paper and on canvas with some of the larger pieces exceeding two metres in width.