Willem Boshoff

Willem Boshoff studied at the Johannesburg College of Art, from 1970 to 1974. His qualifications from the Technikon Witwatersrand include a National Art Teacher’s Diploma (1980), a National Higher Diploma in Fine Art, specialising in printmaking (1984) and a Masters Diploma in Technology in Fine Art (Sculpture). In 1982 and 1993, he visited various countries, including Austria, Germany, England, Wales and Scotland, to further his studies.

Boshoff is a conceptual, multi-media artist whose art deals with the play between the verbal and the visual. From a prolific career, spanning three decades, he has produced idiosyncratic dictionaries, intricately crafted wooden sculptures, detailed prints and monumental works in stone, to name a few. The persistent thread throughout Boshoff’s body of work is an interest in language, books, communication, music, divination and nature.

Boshoff explains that a druid is a healer, diviner and teacher as well as a man of the trees and plants. The name itself relates to trees; in Greek drus is ‘tree’ or ‘oak tree’[1]. As the Big Druid, it is his duty to know and recognise all trees and plants. Over a period of seventeen years of Druid Walks, Boshoff studied and identified tens of thousands of plant species. This knowledge culminated in the works Garden of Words, an installation at the Kirstenbosch Gardens in Cape Town (2007), and House of Herbs, a home in Sasolburg with architectural facades displaying the names of all the herbs and plants found in the Highveld. Similarly, Highveld is an etching that lists every known tree and plant found on the Highveld. When talking about his reasons for focusing so much on the flora of this particular region, Boshoff states, “This is where I was born and I like it more than any place on earth.”[2] Although he exhibits extensively abroad, Boshoff continues to work from his studio at his home in Johannesburg.