Janka Bertelsen was born 1970 in Stavanger in the south of Norway.

After completing high school and spending time in Bergen and London, she studied fashion design in Munich. She started her professional career as a designer for internationally known fashion labels. Already at this point in her life, her creative work was heavily influenced by her roots to her homeland.

During her yearly visits to the family cabin on a small North Sea Island, her desire to express the archaic beautify of her native land through her artistic creation grew stronger. The intensity of the natural elements, the rough sea, the limitless horizon, the constant changing light and the experience of loneliness are the starting points of her creative translation of the natural beauty.

Janka Bertelsen lives in Munich with her two children and her husband, photographer Moritz Teichmann.

Material and motive merge in Janka Bertelsen’s artwork into never-seen-before complete unison.

With the help of photographer Moritz Teichmann, Janka Bertelsen transforms her inspirations taken from the 4 natural elements of fire, water, earth and air into unique work of art. Befitting the different motives, huge slabs of wood of different tree species are worked on. In doing so, Janka Bertelsen frees the grain of the wood to expose its life lines. The result is a relief-like surface structure, on which the chosen motive in its unusual three-dimensional form presents its contours and details.
The smell, sight and touch of wood are the artistic focus of her work. The result of this realistic but nevertheless romantic view of nature is a creation of pictures of memories and longing, which inspire the observer in meditative and calming ways as well as infuse stimulating energy.

3VERK depicts work with and on wood – renaturation of the urban.