Cecilia Bertling

Cecilia Bertling’s cubist inspired portraits are inviting and capricious. The women she depicts seem at once familiar and unreal; it is this juxtaposition that makes them compelling. The women’s expressions convey an intimate affection for the life occurring around them, yet they also seem lost in a parallel universe of swirling shapes and whimsical expanses of color. Often, the figures in Bertling’s paintings remain still and intent while the surrounding marks appear to move sinuously around them.

Bertling maintains a satisfying balance between lucidity and heaviness in her work, giving her images a depth that suggests fullness and verve. The way she marries representational imagery and abstract mark-making in her paintings enhances this sense of fullness, suggesting that clarity and ambiguity can happily coexist. After a long and involved career as a set designer, Cecilia Bertling recently turned her attention primarily to painting. She has exhibited in Stockholm, Miami and New York. She lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden.