Bio

Elizabeth Bergeland (b.1983) is an American painter and illustrator living and working in Philadelphia, PA. Elizabeth received her BFA in painting alongside Anthropology from the University of Colorado in 2006.   

She has exhibited her work nationally and has been featured in Artit Magazine, Create Magazine, Friend of the Artist, Philadelphia Magazine, The Visionary Projects, Fuerteventura Times and Design Sponge. She is the illustrator of Being Edie is Hard Today (2019), and The Great Whipplethorp Bug Collection (2021) with publisher Little,Brown. She lives with her husband and three children.

Artist Statement

At the core of my work is the search for gray matter, and a desire to keep my curiosity intact. I love placing objects or figures in imagined spaces as a way of asking, “What would happen if…”. 

Recently, I am exploring manhood and masculinity in my work by trying to separate the men (that I love) from the masculinity (that I don’t always love). Initiated by the desire to simply “try on” a reversal of traditional roles by placing men’s bodies in the canvas from the female gaze, this series has taken many unexpected turns for me. What began in a space resembling frustration, has moved into a more empathetic place. Approaching the work almost as a journalist or social scientist, and cataloging long interviews with my subjects, this body of work is asking what it means to “be a man” and discovering the myriad of ways that masculinity hurts men, too. 

www.elizabethbergeland.com
@elizabethbergeland


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