ABOUT BERLA
Berrak Ergul Lajoie is a painter artist and photographer based in Montreal, Canada. She was born and grew up in Turkey, studied architecture and graduated from Istanbul Technical University Faculty of Architecture. She spend several years working as an architect in different countries until she moved to Montreal.
​
Art has always been her passion and she always seeks certain ways to express this passion ever since she was a child. During her professional years, she found a path in architecture that brought her closer to art, however painting was one of her favorite tools to reflect her inner world. She started oil painting when she was 22 years old. Since 2017, she has been working with acrylic medium, sometimes by mixing it with paper, textile, metal or some other materials. She paints not only on canvas, sometimes garden murals on walls, custom pet portraits on wine glasses or even some old furnitures.
She discovered her interest on photography, when she was a student in faculty of architecture. She bought her first camera and enrolled to a photography course at her school. First, she started to take architectural photographs and then she captured many traveling photographs through the years. In 2014, she joined to “National Geographic Yourshot” and some of her photographs were published on their website in 2015 and 2016. She believes that photography and painting have a strong connection and both feed her imaginary world and help to enrich her visual vocabulary.
EXHIBITIONS
​​
-
​May 2024,
Group Exhibition at AIRSOME PRISM, Turkish Festival
​​
-
November 2023,
Rawartists-Canada Showcasing, Mccormack Warehouse Toronto
​
-
December 2022-April 2022,
Exhibition at Brasserie Montreal by GALLEA
​
-
November 2022,
Rawartists - Canada Showcasing, Theatre Paradoxe, Montreal
​
-
February 2022 - July 2022, Exhibition at Arruda Teixeira Law Firm by GALLEA
​​
-
February 2020 - April 2020, Le Hang Art Gallery
​​
-
November 2014,National Geographic Museum in Washington, DC. /The Food: Our Global Kitchen Photograph Exhibition at the
​
PUBLICATIONS
-
Montreal Guardian “A Day in The Life” with Istanbul-born painting artist, Berla (2nd Nov, 2022)(https://montrealguardian.com/montreal-artist-berla/)
-
National Geographic Yourshot Photograph Publications:
- March 2, 2016/ Daily Dozen, Photograph: Congestion
- March 4, 2016/Photos Get PhysicalAssignment, Photographs: In Your Dream & One Glass Of Myself
- May 1, 2016/ Editor's Spotlight -World Laughter Day, Photograph: The Teeth
- Sept 16, 2016/ Hair Assignment, Photograph: Purple Dreams
- Nov 3, 2016/ Ugly Food is Beautiful Competition Winner, Photograph: We got the Beet!
- Oct 27, 2017/ The Lines, Textures and Patterns Assignment, Photograph: Part of the Big Puzzle
-
PHOTOS FROM BERLA'S STUDIO