Born in Gelsenkirchen, Germany in 1972, Bernhard Weisskamp emigrated to Australia at the age of six with his parents to settle in Queensland. His father was an established artist and his mother was a talented folk artist, so it was a natural progression for Bernhard to enter the world of art from a young age after demonstrating a talent with the brush. .

Fascinated by comic strips, Bernhard first started creating and drawing his own original characters and comic stories from a young age. It was from this time his love of bright and bold colours developed, and is evident in many of his artworks today. Discovering surrealism and the works of Dali after school, Bernhard expressed himself in the style of one of the greats of this movement and is still an artist of influence today. He says “Dali has an innate sensibility on how to invoke a reaction in people and make a statement with great flair and paradoxically, great simplicity”

Listing Warhol,Pollack and Humes as other great influences, Bernhard is inspired by the everyday. From television to reading, advertising to nature, every day is a source of inspiration. It was while painting a house on a construction job that Bernhard noticed the lay of household paint and was inspired to use it as a medium in his works. For him, it is the simplicity of using a day to day product as an art medium that adds to his art, telling stories of everyday concepts.

“A vodka martini with a twist of lemon and a side shot of tequila” is how he described himself when once asked by a peer. Indeed this can be seen and used to describe his style of art. His abstracts under his name Bernhard Weisskamp evoke a simplicity, a clarity of an everyday being or form, with an underlying sharpness in the composition.