Artist of the Month is a monthly interview series where Tegnerforbundet introduces a member who is represented with artwork in our Sales Department. With this initiative, we want to give readers an insight into the members' artistic work and highlight the importance of drawing in their work.
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Charlotte Bergesen (1971) works in several media, including drawing, printmaking, painting and sculpture. Her art is characterized by a free approach to her subjects and a unique ability to create strange creatures. These creatures, with large heads and peculiar growths, appear dreamlike and enigmatic, and they carry with them a rich narrative. In Bergesen's drawings, the figure plays a central role. The large, flat, often unprocessed areas around the figures give the images a poetic tone. This space reinforces the expression and emphasizes the emotional and narrative layers in her art. She explores themes such as growing up, family, puberty and the complex relationships that shape human life. Bergesen holds a bachelor's degree from Wimbledon School of Art in London. She has also studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Oslo and has furthered her education in San Francisco. The artist lives and works in Oslo.
TF: Charlotte, can you tell us a little about your artistic work?
CB: I have always worked with different media; painting, sculpture, scuba diving and drawing.
The different media I use often overlap, the paintings can be illustrative and resemble drawings, the drawings can be three-dimensional, and the graphics are often based on collage. The size of the works is important in terms of the meeting between the work and the viewer, and has great variation. Books and text are important sources of inspiration for me.
I work intermittently and can have long breaks between different projects, but I work very intensely once I get started. I work in series where the works are closely related and often with the same themes and issues over a long period of time.
TF: Why do you draw? Tell us a little about your work process.
CB: After a project or exhibition has been delivered, I am often exhausted and can experience something that feels like a vacuum where it is difficult to start something new. Drawing then becomes for me a quest, a game and the way to explore what might be next.
I like the immediacy, the spontaneity, the short path from pencil or pen to paper, and I always have a book with me where I can write and sketch down ideas. At the drawing table, I can get into a flow of my own, a meditative state, without having to get up to mix colors or work more dynamically as I do at the printing press or with painting.
TF: Can you name any cartoonists/illustrators who inspire you?
CB: Illustration and text have always inspired me. Svein Nyhus, Lars Fiske and Øyvind Torseter are really great illustrators that I really like. In addition, the fearlessness and freedom in children's drawings is something that really inspires me.
TF: What themes concern you as an artist?
CB: Iwork with themes of identity, interpersonal relationships and loneliness. Memories and experiences are central to the work, and the surreal is a major source of inspiration. Opposites have always interested me, and the encounter between the viewer and the size of the work is of great importance. From a distance, the works can look small and innocent, but if you get closer you will see that the content of the stories can be unexpected.
TF: What does it mean to draw for you in your work?
CB: For me, drawing is intuitive and often the start of something new when I'm working on new projects. But it can also function as an escape or distraction from what's going on around me, and that's often when something exciting and completely unplanned emerges that I can take further.
TF: Tell us a bit about your work in the Tegnerforbundet sales department!
CB: The works I'm showing in Tegnerforbundet's sales department now are small drypoint needles and three-dimensional drawings in Plexiglas boxes with papier-mâché figures.
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