Elizabeth Bergeland: Flipping the Script on Masculinity
Elizabeth Bergeland describes herself as an “incessant melancholy type,” which feels spot-on for an artist whose work digs deep into the grit of masculinity and emerges with paintings so tender, they might make you rethink everything you thought you knew about your high school gym coach. You know the type—red-faced, whistle-blowing, a master at pushing boys into boxes labeled "tough" or "soft." But Elizabeth? She’s prying those boxes wide open, and the results are truly beautiful.
Instead of giving us the same old female figures languishing under the male gaze, she’s doing the opposite—turning the whole thing upside down. It didn’t start as some grand statement. Elizabeth was simply tired of seeing the female form plastered across every gallery wall. A fair critique, given that centuries of art history have been dedicated to variations of the same nude pose. Then something hit her—hard. Watching her young son already begin to act out the script society had written for him—“Boys don’t cry,” “Be tough,” etc.—it was all there, served up like an unappetizing platter of stereotypes, probably with a football and a steak.
This personal realization sparked a shift in Elizabeth’s work. She began thinking not just about how boys grow into men, but how men, from childhood, are groomed to be emotionally stoic, constantly trapped under the weight of a specific kind of masculinity. Her paintings of men are subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) invitations to reconsider what it actually means to "be a man." Her subjects don’t hide behind gritted teeth or muscle-bound poses. They exist as they are—vulnerable, open, and emotionally exposed in ways that seem almost revolutionary.
Elizabeth’s work is filtered through the female gaze, but that’s less about making a feminist statement and more about reintroducing men to the world as whole human beings. Her brushstrokes ask questions most of us would rather not touch: Why does masculinity come with so much pressure? And who, exactly, is setting these impossible standards? In her paintings, you won’t find the usual tropes—no stoicism mistaken for strength, no bravado masking insecurity. What you will find is an unflinching look at men. It’s a perspective we’re not used to seeing, and it’s that discomfort—the space between what we’ve been conditioned to expect and what we’re actually presented with—that gives her work its power.
What makes her approach even more compelling is that she doesn’t hand us easy answers. If anything, her work raises more questions than it resolves. Her portraits don’t force conclusions; they offer a pause, an opportunity to rethink the narrative surrounding masculinity. It’s not about throwing out gender roles altogether, but rather expanding the script. What if masculinity didn’t have to look one way? What if it didn’t have to carry the heavy burden of invulnerability?
At the end of the day, Elizabeth isn’t just painting men. She’s painting the complexities of being human, and yes, that means confronting gender roles head-on. She’s giving us a chance to reflect, to ask why we’ve let certain norms define us for so long, and maybe—just maybe—she’s suggesting that it’s time to rewrite the script altogether. If you leave her work with more questions than answers, that’s exactly what she intended. After all, sitting in the uncertainty is part of the process.