Artist Jason Bronkhorst explores his ancestral legacy in new show

It rarely matters what a painter looks like, although with Johannesburg artist Jason Bronkhorst it is very helpful.

Bronkhorst is white, middle-aged and has short-cropped hair that makes his ears sort of stick out - much like the men he depicts in his confident debut exhibition at Kalashnikovv Gallery in Braamfontein.

"Each piece is a loose self-portrait," offers the 40-year-old artist in an explanatory text for his exhibition Board of Directors. Don't take him too literally.

Among the dozen portraits of lone men is a scathing study of US President Donald Trump, and another of maverick artist Norman Catherine. The blurred study of Catherine is only a self-portrait in the sense that it depicts one of his heroes.

Board of Directors includes his ink drawings, which are modestly scaled and suggestive of the structural architecture for his larger paintings.

In 2008, in a fit of pique, Bronkhorst told a local art magazine: "Some of the artists hanging in galleries can hardly draw. Illustrators, by virtue of having to communicate an idea, are far better draughtsmen than many artists can hope to be."

He is far less protestant about draughtsmanship these days.

Largely self-taught, although he did attend the National School of the Arts (where he started a rugby team), his paintings are purposefully messy.

His painting combines acrylic paint, oil stick, watercolours, charcoal and spraypaint, which he rubs and smears with brushes, dowels and cardboard. His process doesn't always work, but when it does his expressionist style takes wing.

Lay Any Burden on Me (2016) portrays one of Bronkhorst's generic, pink-headed dunderheads. While working on it he became exasperated and dumped black paint over it. The end result is a wily mix of calculation and spontaneity.

One of the strengths of Bronkhorst's portraits is their relative anonymity. In this sense, he is dissimilar to Anton Karstel, who in 2008 created a series of blurry portrait paintings of former white prime ministers. Rather, he is an heir to the satirical painter Robert Hodgins.

Board of Directors took three years to complete and reveals evolutionary shifts in Bronkhorst's style and ambition.

The show includes two new group portraits, both depicting earnest white men huddled around a leader signing his name to paper.

These works bear out Bronkhorst's project of exploring his ancestral legacy and issues of white privilege. He parlays this earnestness into paintings that delight in manipulating cheap paint materials into forms that speak about our times.

• 'Board of Directors' is on until June 29 at Kalashnikovv Gallery in Johannesburg.

• This article was originally published in The Times.