ABOUT

Artist Statement

I work with painting, photography, and text. My work aims to convey powerful visual stories that spread joy, spark curiosity, and invite wonder and reflection.

Energetic movements, vibrant colors, and multiple layers characterize my paintings. Often, traces of underlying layers emerge through the finished surfaces – like echoes of something that once was or fragments of stories that refuse to be hidden or forgotten.

My creative process is intuitive, playful, and spontaneous. When I start a new painting, I rarely have a concrete plan. I understand what I want to express only after several layers of paint, charcoal, and collage. It could be a feeling of an abstract landscape, a specific city, or a state of mind.

Each painting is like an expedition into unknown territory. When finished, it bears the marks of the surprises and discoveries I encountered. Sometimes, the process is playfully simple, and I reach the goal quickly. Other times, time-consuming challenges arise. In art, as in life.

Artist Bio

Lise Bjerkan is an Oslo-based artist who works with painting, photography, and text. She uses abstract visual language, leading the viewer into a world of imagery that spreads joy, sparks curiosity, and invites wonder and reflection.

Lise often integrates her photographs into her paintings. She also incorporates text in her visual expression, including cutouts from newspapers, books, letters, notes, and outdated posters on lamp posts and public bulletin boards. She primarily paints with acrylics but often combines the paint with charcoal, ink, pencils, and colored pencils. This results in works with an energetic and playful expression. The outcome is vibrant images containing many layers of visual and emotional stories.

Lise draws inspiration from her travels and encounters with people. She finds great joy in exploring large cities, particularly in Europe and Asia, but is also inspired by smaller, hidden gems, such as those in the Croatian and Greek island regions. The memories she brings home contain colors, landscapes, food, and people. Lise’s art reflects her love for and curiosity about the world and can be viewed as visual diaries filled with abstract stories and memories.

Lise has a two-year education in visual arts from Nydalen Art School (2022) and has attended the Oslo School of Fine Art Photography (2022). She also has a strong academic background, with a PhD in social anthropology (2002) and a master’s degree in journalism (2023). Her research has focused on themes such as old age, death, salvation, and asceticism in India, human trafficking in the Balkans, living conditions among Roma minorities in Eastern Europe, and child labor in West Africa. These experiences influence and enrich her artistic expression, giving her work a deep, humanistic, and socially engaged perspective.