Ernesto Lemke: The Artist Who Paints with Bricks

Ernesto never set out to become a “Brickpainter.” In fact, he spent almost twenty years teaching art, by accident. At the time, the Netherlands had begun creating a new type of high school that prioritised mindfulness, community education, and fluid adaptation to unclear concepts, over conventional academics. The founders deliberately sought people outside of traditional education, people with what they called “real-world experience.” Ernesto, then a struggling young painter, fit the bill.

“I didn’t plan on it,” he recalls. “But I found a real passion in being among like-minded people… students, colleagues, walking this pioneering path together. Most of my creative ideas went into that school, not just in practice but in shaping its mission. It was a thrilling experience. For a long time, my artistic urges were fulfilled. Until the school was established… and once again I stumbled onto a new road. By accident.”

That accident was LEGO Masters. Out of pure joy, and a longing for adventure, he applied as a contestant for the Dutch/Belgian version of the television series. To his surprise, he was selected. “I had hardly any LEGO experience,” he laughs. “It wasn’t a childhood passion for me, just a creative thing on the side. So I approached it sincerely, but not seriously. I didn’t expect anything.”

Then came the assignment: using LEGO bricks, build a portrait of your partner from memory in just two hours.

“Little did they know,” Ernesto says, “that I had a background as a painter with a specific interest in people and portraits. I knew the intricacies and difficulties of portraiture. I had never used LEGO as a source material before, but somehow, it worked.”

The result stunned the jury, one of LEGO’s top designers. “He told me he’d never seen anything like it,” Ernesto recalls. “No one had ever built a face without sketches, software, or pre-design. That’s when I realized something new was being born.”

Brickpainting.

The follow-up assignment; a monumental 3D bust of Van Gogh, introduced Ernesto to a national audience. Suddenly, millions of viewers saw what he could do. “That’s when I understood,” he says, “that I had stumbled on a completely new medium.” From there came three more television appearances, museum invitations, commissions, and sales. Soon, Ernesto was no longer just an art teacher; he was a full-time artist, building a career on an invention nobody saw coming.

But his story did not begin with bricks. Ernesto once dreamed of being a comic book artist. “In the end, painting pulled me away from comics,” he says. “With comics, you need a sequence, a whole story. With painting, you can tell everything in one frame. And faces, they already carry stories inside them.”

That obsession with faces, stories written into expressions, runs through his brickpaintings of figures like Van Gogh and Ed Sheeran. As they are not just portraits, but presences.

Ernesto has a unique ability to capture presence in a medium that has many limitations, even though LEGO bricks are geometric and cannot bend. However, sometimes something goes beyond those limitations. At times, a portrait transforms into something deeper and more resonant. While I would never claim that all my works achieve this effect, I always strive for it. When it happens, it feels spiritual, as if I am a conduit and the presence flows through on its own.

Heritage adds another layer to his work. Ernesto is of Indonesian and Dutch descent, a history marked by colonial ties. Old family photographs have long fascinated him, faded memories captured in black-and-white. In painting, he recreates them with delicate washes of blue oil, images that are tangible but forever out of focus.

“I’ve been collecting translucent blue LEGO bricks,” he says. “Someday, I want to make a huge portrait entirely in shades of blue. To simulate that faded effect of memory. To capture my heritage in bricks. It will take time. But I will do it.”

When Ernesto builds in public, the act becomes less about the artwork and more about the encounter. Adults, drawn by nostalgia, are suddenly transported back to childhood. “LEGO normalises play,” Ernesto says. “It reminds people of something they might have lost. And it makes them ask: Can this be art? That moment of wonder is powerful.”

Workshops extend that experience. Ernesto doesn’t promise beginners that they’ll leave as portrait artists. Instead, he centers them on process discovery, not perfection. “Managing expectations is key,” he says. “It’s not about the result. It’s about seeing differently. Questioning perception. Rediscovering creativity.”

If money and time were no object, Ernesto dreams of returning to sculpture on a grand scale. “The only thing holding me back is cost,” he admits. “But in a way, those limitations push me. They force me to explore the boundaries of what’s possible. Having no limitations can be limiting too.”

Ultimately, what Ernesto wants is simple. “Smiles. Amazement. Wonder,” he says. “I want people to feel they’re walking between two worlds. One of recognition, ‘That’s a portrait, that’s LEGO, that’s so-and-so’… and one of discovery, that creates a feeling of; ‘Wait, is that LEGO? Is this art?’ If I can spark that shift, if I can open someone’s eyes even a little bit wider, then I’ve added my two cents.”