Danelle Bergstrom (born 1957)[1] is an Australian visual artist known for landscapes and portraits of significant Australians and International figures.
Bergstrom was born in Sydney. She attended Hunters Hill High School and studied art at the Julian Ashton Art School (1973-1979) and earned a Bachelor's of Art Education at Alexander Mackie CAE. Her sister is Antarctic ecologist Dr Dana Bergstrom. Bergstrom began her career in the 1980s as a high school art teacher. She moved into tertiary education as Head of Department in a visual design college in the 1990s. She began exhibiting works in the 1980s, in major art prizes and solo shows by the 1990s.[2]
Between 2007 and 2017 Bergstrom completed 24 public portrait commissions, including portraits of all six Chief Justices of the Northern Territory Supreme Court as part of the court's centenary celebration. These are exhibited in the main hall of the Supreme Court in Darwin.[4][2] Many of her commissioned portraits are found in the collections of Australian courthouses, universities, museums and private collections internationally.[5][6]
From 2018 to 2021, Bergstrom's notable portraits included Sir Tim Smit, President Tarja Halonen of Finland, Chancellor Ulrika Wolf-Knutts.
In 2023, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery presented a major career survey exhibition, entitled 'Afterglow', presenting key works from the last 25 years of the artist’s practice.[7]
Between 1995 and 2016, Bergstrom was a finalist nine times of the most prestigious portraiture art prize in Australia, the Archibald Prize, awarded Highly Commended in 2004 and the Packing Room Prize twice in 1995 and 2007.
Bergstrom has been a finalist at the Portia Geach Memorial Portrait Prize at the SH Irvin Gallery fifteen times between the years 1993 and 2015, winning the People Choice Award five times.[8]
Bergstrom has painted portraits of many notable people. She often uses more than one canvas in her portraits to create a time sequence or capture different aspects of her subject. She described her tryptic of Marget Olley saying: "Using three images in one work became important in expressing time and movement in the final concept: our conversations together. The first panel is more distant, a warm, friendly greeting. The second is about dialogue and exchanging ideas. The third expresses an aspect of her cheeky personality."[9] She also creates multiple portraits by depicting reflections such as in 'Two movements - Peter Sculthorpe' and ‘JFS Transposition’[10]
Bergstrom also paints landscapes such as her 2008 Symphony series depicting diverse elements of Australia's Northern Territory [11] and her 2017 Våga series depicting Scandinavian seascapes.[12]
Bergstrom is the daughter of Natalie Bergstrom, a commercial artist and sculptor. Bergstrom raised her two children, son Shannan and daughter Alexarndra in Sydney, Australia. Since 2011, Bergstrom has divided her time between Australia, Sweden and Aland, Finland, having connected with her father, Leif Bergstrom's, family in Sweden in 1997.[13]
