Michael Beckurts: Inside a Cape Town Painter's Studio

Art

Portrait of Cape Town artist Michael Beckurts

A young Cape Town painter whose studio feels exactly like he does, warm, creative and completely without pretence.

Author

Micha Weinberger

Photography

Micha Weinberger, Michael Beckurts

Sep 18, 2026

The studio is filled with light, and one whole wall is covered in photographs, Cape Town's nature, its streets, its people, gathered without any obvious order. Somewhere among them hangs a print by a German expressionist, one example among many things that inspire him, and it sits there with the same quiet weight as everything else on that wall. Michael matched the room from the moment I walked in. He is kind in a way that felt immediate, generous with his time, humble about work that clearly does not need the modesty. I felt welcomed before we had even properly started talking.

Every painting starts long before the canvas does.

He showed me that almost right away, opening a drawer near his desk full of small sketches built up over years, drawings of friends caught mid conversation, a scene from the city, a corner of a jazz club, done quickly and kept without much ceremony. This is where everything actually begins for him, in these small, unguarded fragments, long before a brush ever meets a larger surface. From the drawer he walked me past the finished work, large, colourful scenes of the city that carry the same instinct as the sketches but at an entirely different scale, and then to something newer, painting onto ceramic, learning how the surface takes colour so differently from paper, a process that seemed to demand a lot of patience.

Mostly, though, I remember the conversation. I ended up talking with him about art, about design, about life, for far longer than I had probably planned, and I genuinely did not want the studio visit to end. Four of his paintings are now on show in our aēsplore studio space in town, which is as close as I can get to bringing a piece of that visit back with me. This is what a Design Safari actually offers, not a checklist of sights but an introduction to the people who see this city differently, one studio at a time. If a morning like this leaves you wanting more, aēsplore carries the same idea further, into multi day journeys through design, art and architecture across Africa.