......... Biography ..........

Petronella van den Berg was born in the Netherlands where she attended the Academy of the Art in Zutphen and where she apprenticed for over two years with some of Europe's and Africa's leading sculptors.

In 2002 she immigrated to Canada and during that short time she has participated in sculpture symposiums in the Okanagan, and has exhibit her paintings and sculptures across the region.

She is a full-time contemporary acrylic and sculpture artist who first began developing a UNIQUE series of faceless humans with undertones of pure abstraction. In 2002 Van den Berg enchanced this expression with stone sculptures. Using her paintings and sculptures to translate inner feelings, Petronella's work has the power to move the viewer and take on an identity all its own.

The artist prefers to work in acrylic, often in vivid colours, and with harmoniously expressionistic techniques to evoke a specific mood. She enjoys art that feeds the soul and has a depth to it that goes beyond its physical presence.

"I'm trying to get a sense of the spirit.

I'm sculpting and painting a language of the soul"

She has created sculptures from Soapstone, Alabaster, Marble, Granite, Limestone, Pyrophyllite, African Wonder stone and Serpentine. The paintings, as wellas the sculptures are a style of grace and symplicity in highly abstract and elegant presentation. Her works are in the homes of private collectors throughout North America and Europe. At this time, the artist maintains her own studio and gallery: UNIQUE in Naramata, BC.

Artist Statement:

Emotions, personal experiences and Van den Berg's daily life, past, present and future is the main guides for her sculptures and paintings. Using her life to produce her art, Petronella's work translates an impulse of her own reality onto canvas and stone; although it can first appear stark melancholic, it ultimately conveys a sense of equanimityand warmth to the viewer.

"Sculpting is a great benifit to me and a welcome variation from painting. Training the hand to respond to the mind produces a fulfillment in itself. Painting and sculpting are always for me to aticulate my passion and internal dialogue"

The principle artists who have inspired her are the sculptors Constatin Brancusi, Auguste Rodin, Menry Moore and the old master painters J.M.W. Turner and Modigliani.