Pockets, conceal or reveal?

Pockets, conceal or reveal? Historically, pockets in garments were the only place especially women could store or carry their most precious belongings. My most treasured possessions are my adoptive mum’s diaries that she wrote when she and my dad were waiting to get approved for adoption.  She wrote these the three years it took me to arrive as a six-month-old baby and kept writing until I was three. 

The paintings, mono-prints and etchings in this series address feelings and thoughts around identity, motherhood and fertility explored through my personal lens of being adopted, my mother’s journals and being a mother myself channelled by abstraction. 

These works ask the question: What does it mean to choose to be a mother? Or not? 

Contemporary, abstract painting
Contemporary abstract painting
Bjertnæs tror at han i møte med kunsten er på sitt sanneste, og mener den kan binde mennesker sammen i felles erfaringer.

Innermost  

This series of paintings looks inward and responds to the feeling of our collective need to speed up the process of making the right choices regarding the climate and how we make a mark whilst we are here on this planet. With this shift, the brush strokes and colours are lighter. I sense restlessness within young people, with many of my contemporaries questioning their purpose too, this urge for change within what our society deems valuable is also embedded in the energy of these paintings.

ETCHINGS

MONOPRINTS

COLLABORATION