Katja Bjergby: The colours and creativity of nature

By Signe Hansen | Photos: Lukas Bukoven

Inspired by nature, cloud formations, and soft sea creatures, the art of Katja Bjergby reflects the same light, playful energy that comes through when speaking to the artist herself. After more than a decade of practice, her work is bringing a sense of vitality and affirmation to homes and workplaces across Denmark and beyond.

There is an immediate lightness to Bjergby’s work, but beneath it lies something more grounded – a commitment to joy, play and self-expression. Many choose to place her pieces in intimate spaces, including bedrooms, drawn to their uplifting presence. “My work carries both strength and spontaneity,” Bjergby says. “What I often hear is that it makes people feel more alive – it reminds them that there’s more within them, and that they are allowed to shine as they are.”

For those who live or work with her pieces, the effect is often immediate. The colours, shapes and subtle shimmer combine to infuse the spaces they adorn with the soft lightness of the clouds, the colourful vivacity of the sea, and the untamed energy of nature.

Photo: Katja Bjergby.

From business school to ceramics

Talking to Bjergby, one has not the slightest of doubts that this is a person who loves what she does. But while she has loved drawing ever since she was a child, as an adult it took her a little while to dare to trust her creative energy.

Many of Katja Bjergby’s ceramic works are inspired by soft underwater organisms. Photo: Katja Bjergby.

After completing her studies at Copenhagen Business School, she enrolled in a folk high school focused on art – a turning point that led her to continue her training in visual arts and ceramics at the Teachers College of Art and Craft. She later went on to teach art, while developing her own practice alongside it. “I was making my own work more and more,” she recalls. “At some point, I felt that I had to follow it properly.”

A decade on, her practice has become firmly established. After years in a shared studio, she now works from her home on a houseboat on Holmen in Copenhagen, allowing her to move fluidly between daily life and creative process. “It’s quite special to have it all around me,” she says. “I can step in and out of the work, and return to it with fresh eyes.”

Katja Bjergby: The colours and creativity of nature

Working between mediums

Today, Bjergby continues to work across paintings and ceramics, allowing her to move freely between different rhythms. “There’s a different energy in the two,” she says. “Painting is more immediate, whereas ceramics takes time. It’s slower and more tactile.”

Her paintings include a series of acrylic works on paper, featuring fantastical, colourful creatures that playfully float through space, impossible to look away from. Inspired by the skies, the paintings start out as doodles on paper. Like with the other media she works in, the process is always driven by joy.

Artist Katja Bjergby.

“I always choose the one that makes me smile, and love that I’m the one in control of how they look—that it’s my expression. I can give them as many limbs and forms as I want, inspired by patterns I absorb from books and exhibitions,” Bjergby enthuses. “It becomes a playful, instinctive process driven by joy, imagination and creation – it’s a childlike excitement which I think it’s important to preserve as an adult.”

Photo: Katja Bjergby.

Art that lifts you up

Regardless of the medium, her figures do not arrive fully formed but grow out of loose, wandering lines and impressions. Shapes stretch, shift, and take on a life of their own, guided more by instinct than intention. “It’s a bit like doodling when you’re on the phone,” she says. “It just flows.”

Alongside her own pieces, she also creates works on commission for private homes, offices and hospitality venues. Whether it is a single painting or a larger installation, the process remains the same. “It’s about sensing what fits the space,” she says. “And creating something that feels good to be around.”

Reflecting on her work with businesses in particular, she adds: “We’re so influenced by what we look at every day – and when art brings positive energy, it can benefit both employees and visitors, creating an atmosphere where people feel uplifted and more open to thinking creatively.”

Katja Bjergby: The colours and creativity of nature