Danelle Bergstrom facts for kids

Danelle Bergstrom (born in 1957) is a talented Australian artist. She is famous for painting beautiful landscapes and amazing portraits. She has painted many important Australians and people from around the world.

About Danelle Bergstrom

Danelle Bergstrom was born in Sydney, Australia. She went to Hunters Hill High School and then studied art at the Julian Ashton Art School from 1973 to 1979. She also earned a special degree in art education from Alexander Mackie CAE. Her sister is Dr Dana Bergstrom, who studies the environment in Antarctica.

Danelle started her career in the 1980s as a high school art teacher. In the 1990s, she became the head of a visual design department at a college. She began showing her artworks in the 1980s and had her own art shows by the 1990s.

Two of her paintings are kept in the Australian National Portrait Gallery. One is called Pioneer and shows the Australian pilot Nancy Bird Walton. The other is called Vivisector and is a portrait of the Australian writer David Williamson.

Between 2007 and 2017, Danelle painted 24 public portraits. These included paintings of all six Chief Justices (top judges) of the Northern Territory Supreme Court. These special portraits are displayed in the main hall of the Supreme Court in Darwin. Many of her commissioned portraits (paintings made for a specific person or place) can be found in Australian courthouses, universities, museums, and private collections around the world.

More recently, from 2018 to 2021, Danelle painted portraits of important people like Sir Tim Smit from England, President Tarja Halonen of Finland, and Chancellor Ulrika Wolf-Knutts. In 2023, the Bathurst Regional Art Gallery held a big exhibition called 'Afterglow'. It showed many of her key artworks from the past 25 years.

Awards and Art Prizes

Danelle Bergstrom has won many awards for her art. She was a finalist nine times for the Archibald Prize, which is Australia's most famous portrait painting award. She was "Highly Commended" (meaning she almost won) in 2004. She also won the "Packing Room Prize" twice, in 1995 and 2007. This prize is chosen by the people who unpack and hang the paintings for the exhibition!

She has also been a finalist fifteen times for the Portia Geach Memorial Portrait Prize between 1993 and 2015. She won the "People's Choice Award" five times at this competition, which means many people loved her paintings!

Her Portraits

Danelle Bergstrom has painted many famous people. She often uses more than one canvas (painting surface) for her portraits. This helps her show different moments in time or different parts of a person's personality.

For example, when she painted Margaret Olley, she used three canvases. She explained that the first panel showed a friendly greeting. The second was about talking and sharing ideas. The third showed Margaret's playful side. Danelle also creates multiple portraits by painting reflections, like in her works 'Two movements - Peter Sculthorpe' and ‘JFS Transposition’.

Some of her notable portraits include:

• President Tarja Halonen of Finland (2021)
• Sir Tim Smit from England (2018)
• David Williamson, the playwright (2017)
• Nancy Bird Walton, the aviator (2003)
• Margaret Olley, the artist (2003)

Landscapes

Besides portraits, Danelle Bergstrom also paints beautiful landscapes. Her 2008 "Symphony" series showed different parts of Australia's Northern Territory. Her 2017 "Våga" series featured seascapes (pictures of the sea) from Scandinavia.

Personal Life

Danelle's mother, Natalie Bergstrom, was also an artist who made sculptures. Danelle raised her two children, a son named Shannan and a daughter named Alexarndra, in Sydney, Australia. Since 2011, Danelle has spent her time living in Australia, Sweden, and Åland, Finland. She connected with her father's family in Sweden in 1997.