Joel Bergquist

The world has been anticipating an artist like Bergquist and you are among one of the lucky ones to be discovering him today. Welcome!! Bergquist is painting to create a better world and his paintings are painted with love to inspire love. His life's work has been to express his joy and love for paint which for him translates into the endless possibilites of joy and love in life. He has learned through paint and it affirms this lesson daily to him through his painting and observation of his painting that loving is our greatest quality as human beings. And he therefore believes that love, loving and being loved is what will ultimately save us, our humanity. He has been making art his whole life, and has contributed greatly to the many worlds within the world of art. Painting is his voice and his means of appreciating, learning and sharing. After nearly 30 years as a professional artist Bergquist, in the last three years, is painting his most important works, a sampling of which you may begin to experience here. Bergquist is most excited that you are here today visiting this site and exploring his work. Five years ago he joined Facebook and later Instagram. Although his work is meant to be experienced in person he is most exc...

Bergquist attended the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design and received a BFA in painting. After his formal training he moved to New York City to begin working as a professional artist. While making art he was schooled informally by the international artworld working for many of the artworld elite, artist Robert Rauschenberg, art dealer Larry Gagosian, and the auction house Sotheby's. Bergquist wishing to connect his work with a more populous audience moved to Los Angeles after NYC and while creating and exhibiting his own works worked for the Walt Disney and Paramount
Pictures Studios.

Bergquist exhibited extensively during the first part of his career in New York and Los Angeles, in many top galleries including solo and group shows. After dissatisfaction in this environment, mostly because of the elitism of the high end art world he began to exhibit in many alternative spaces and started marketing his own work. Much of the last 15 years of his work has been large commissioned work with interior designers. He is most excited about his current work. Five years ago he joined Facebook with the idea to market his own work. He is most excited by the collectors and diverse audience he has been able to meet through Facebook and Instagram. He has an online audience that reaches all corners of the globe. He is more excited than he has ever been about the power of art to create a better world and the online medium and its ability to connect us all. His online experience has directly influenced the making of his work these last 3 years, a sampling of which you will find here. In the last few years Bergquist has been able to bring together some of the best strengths in painting's history to date to create a work that carries his story and a new way to paint that makes perfect sense to us in its directness and simplicity.