This exhibit of two artist, Joan Kolker and Christy Bergland, who also are friends is wildly different in subject matter, approach and style.

Joan Kolker is currently a full-time practicing painter but wasn’t for a long time. While when she was young she attended art school and practiced painting she stopped in her 20’s and didn’t find herself with brush in hand till 2000!

Joan’s approach to starting a painting is a simple practice where she chooses a paint or pastel or pencil and just makes strokes. From there she opens her mind to allow her imagination to create the painting, she does admit to having trouble once things start to come together to not overthink and control the outcome. This conscious ability to keep the thinking mind at easy to allow the imagination to flow is what her painting arena is like.

“My painting is an area of my life where the vital flow of life and my heart can experience directly- opening and closing.”- Joan Kolker.

Christy Bergland is an artist/ art therapist. Christy has been an artist since she was a child. She grew up in both Maryland and Maine, received her BFA from MICA, her MFS from the University of Pennsylvania. Post graduation she started teaching art to school children where they were visually describing their experiences which led to her career as an art therapist. She returned to school to to get a masters in Creative Arts in Therapy from Drexel University. She has worked with Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Baltimore for 40 year and has a private practice as well. Christy’s work as an art therapist has significant;y shaped her work as an artist. “The notion of connection in collaboration as well as the writings of D.W. Winnicott about “play” and “transitional phenomenon” are fundamental concepts in my artwork as well as in my art therapy” Christy said. Her subject matter focuses on “loss” and “change” and are essential in the process of “finding” the visual work in present time.

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