Bronwen MacDonald is a South African artist who favours classical, academic and imaginative realism. She lives in Japan with her family where she worked as an ESL teacher in elementary schools for over a decade. As of 2016, after a move to Nagasaki Prefecture, she quit working full-time to pursue her artistic side and return to her academic studies in classics. Creating art with pencils, ink and more recently oil paints, her work is heavily influenced by her life-long interest and training in ancient history and mythology.
For questions, sales and other inquiries at:
bronwenmac@protonmail.com
Education and Training:
- 2020 ~ current: Master of Arts in Ancient Cultures from Stellenbosch University
- 2018 ~ current: Mentorship under Melissa Gay.
- 2018 Fall: Beginning Illustration with March Scheff at SmART School.
- 2018 Spring: Figure Boot Camp with Marc Scheff at SmART School.
- 2017: Oil painting under Ogawa Katsuya (小川勝矢) at ARCSTUDIO ギャラリー長崎, Japan.
- 2004: Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Classical Studies from UKZN
- 2003: Bachelor of Arts from UKZN
Memberships:
- 2022 ~ current: Australasian in Ancient World Studies (AWAWS)
- 2021 ~ current: The Etruscan Foundation (EF)
- 2020 ~ current: The Lambda Classical Caucus (LCC)
- 2019 ~ current: The Women’s Classical Caucus (WCC)
- 2018 ~ current: Association of Science Fiction & Fantasy Artists (ASFA)
Favourite Quotes:
It’s a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it…if we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.
— Donna Tartt, The Secret History
An act of pure attention, if you are capable of it, will bring its own answer. And you choose that object to concentrate upon, which will best focus your consciousness. Every real discovery made, every serious and significant decision ever reached, was reached and made by divination. The soul stirs, and makes an act of pure attention, and that is a discovery.
— D.H. Lawrence, Etruscan Places