Kathleen Bergen

Originally a native of the Washington, D.C., area, I graduated from the Maryland Institute, College of Art, in Baltimore, MD, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree.

During a cross-country road trip after graduation, I fell in love with the landscape and open space of the west coast. I made the move to sunny San Diego in 1999, and have lived and worked as an artist and designer here ever since. In 2003, I was a finalist in The RSVP Directory of Illustration competition, where my work was on view at the Society of Illustrators Gallery in New York. More recently I’ve shown at galleries an...

Originally a native of the Washington, D.C., area, I graduated from the Maryland Institute, College of Art, in Baltimore, MD, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree.

During a cross-country road trip after graduation, I fell in love with the landscape and open space of the west coast. I made the move to sunny San Diego in 1999, and have lived and worked as an artist and designer here ever since. In 2003, I was a finalist in The RSVP Directory of Illustration competition, where my work was on view at the Society of Illustrators Gallery in New York. More recently I’ve shown at galleries and art events in San Diego including ArtWalk, Zazou, 101 Artists Colony, and The Basile Gallery. In 2008, I had the amazing opportunity to have a solo exhibition at Gallery Ississ in Japan, marking my international debut! The gallery, located in Kitayama, Kyoto, showcased my “Shadows” series, that combine photography, textures and scanned objects to create surreal and dreamlike portraits.

My passion and love of art still drives me today. Creating art is so ingrained in me that I can’t even separate it from myself as a person. A good friend of mine once wrote a poetry series about some paintings of mine. This is my favorite passage; it really sums up this feeling...

“If you could feel my colors,
If you could taste them,
You would know my name.
I would not have to paint at all.
I would only have to touch you,
and you would know.”

Jeremy Redmon, “The Desert Series”