Berit Jarama Estabrook, born in Mexico of Peruvian and Norwegian parents, grew up in Sweden. She then moved to Austria and presently lives in Virginia with her family. Wild nature has made her feel at home wherever she is, and the animals in her life have always been like immediate family.
As a child, art was always present, since her father was a painter. When she saw Frida Kahlo’s work in 1982 at the Kulturhuset in Stockholm, it ignited her dream to become a painter. Simultaneously she was always passionate about the spiritual reality of things and has ever since been an explorer of spirit, heart and mind. Shamanism, Buddhism, Yoga, and Vedic teachings guide and inspire her life as well as her art. Her love for animals and nature has over the years developed into activism, and lately, art, spirituality and activism have merged into Art Activism.
Some painters that inspire her work are Frida Kahlo, Rick Bartow, Per Kirkeby, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Elmer Bischoff, Elisabeth Cummings, Peter Doig, Jules Buck Jones and Rebecca Haines. Explorer Jaques Cousteau, film maker David Attenborough, and the writers Joanna Macy, John Seed, and Eleanor O’Hanlon are great minds within animal conservation and animal advocacy that also inspire and motivate her work.
Berit Jarama Estabrook 