Collection: About Sandy Bergstrom Mesmer

Who is Sandy Bergstrom Mesmer?

Someone who has had an unusual artistic road.

It all started when her mom took her….to a dog show.

“My mother took me to my first dog show when I was eight. It was in the old Hartford Armory, in wet and nasty February weather. Despite the cold, I found inside rows and rows of beautifully groomed dogs benched with their people. The people impressed me even more than the dogs; I was amazed by their laser-focused intention to create and showcase these magnificent creatures.

I walked up and down the benches and talked to anyone willing to answer my questions. And I still remember the dog that took Best in Show that day – an Old English Sheepdog named Ch. Fezziwig Raggedy Andy, a friendly goofball with a movie star charm. It looked like he had a spotlight on him. I was thoroughly hooked and knew that one day I would breed and show.”

Being eight years old has its assets and liabilities. Showing dogs wasn’t in the cards for her parents, so Bergstrom Mesmer moved on. She doodled on everything she could get her hands on and read so many books (over 30 a month) that her sixth-grade teacher encouraged her to get outside and play sometimes as well.

Sixteen found Bergstrom Mesmer bored with school and wanting a change. Her sister Lucy invited her to join her in Copenhagen to study pastoral counseling. She jumped at the chance.

The following years passed quickly with studying to be a counselor and the life of an ex-pat. There wasn’t any art, with one exception.

“I found a book about Mary Cassatt in Copenhagen. I loved her bravery -- she wasn’t afraid to push limits with materials and color and I loved how comfortable her best paintings felt, how she used light to create cozy images. I could walk into one of her paintings and just plop myself down in an armchair. I particularly loved her Japanese prints and learned from her that a simple line is generally better than a complicated flourish. I loved how she concentrated on one niche, drawing women and children; it made sense to me to become iconic in one area rather than mediocre in many. I felt that if I ever found my way back to art I would not want to copy Marie but to use her as a touchstone and an impetus; I wanted to be able to work from this idea: if I was Mary, alive today, what would I do?”

Marriage intervened and a move to Munich Germany, including an ill-omened year as a pub owner with her husband.

“Ten days into running the Herzog Albrecht our experienced partner decided he wasn’t going to work with us after all. I had no professional culinary experience and George had a business background. Our attitude starting was ‘How hard can this be?’ Well, we very quickly found out that it could be very hard indeed. The end of the year, with the restaurant sold, found us wiser, poorer, and with a treasure trove of stories and amusing cautionary tales.”

After the constant and hectic schedule of the restaurant, Bergstrom Mesmer found herself hanging out at home at loose ends. She played with various media, and on a lark applied to the prestigious Munich Academy. To her astonishment, she was accepted.

“On the first day the professor asked us to draw whatever we liked. After watching me work, he took me aside and told me that my technique was horrible, and I would need to start again at Zero; then he would show me how to produce quality art correctly. I thought: did I want to break everything back down? Or did I want to take this art journey solo and figure out things as I went along? It would be harder that way, I would have to learn as I went and maintain my unique style, with the real risk that I could fall on my face, but I was willing to try. I never went back to the Academy.

“However, I’m not ‘self-taught’! I have learned from many artists and I am regularly in awe of the techniques of others – to name a few, my sister Lucy Bergstrom who is a wonderful graphics artist, Jim Warren, J.Wren Supak and Armelle Pruniaux. I love the old masters and can spend hours at museums, inches from a masterpiece, trying to see how they did it. I’ll keep on learning until the day I die.”

Motherhood soon took precedence over everything else. Tyra arrived and the Mesmers moved to Clearwater, FL; two years later Jason was on the scene.

In between corralling children, Bergstrom Mesmer was finally able to give in to her dream of breeding and showing dogs. In 1980, she picked an irascible rare breed called the Silky Terrier, which looks like a big Yorkshire but hails from Australia and is much tougher. She slowly learned the ins and outs of the “Fancy” and after much trial and error and the support of many friends began to accumulate championships. As of this date, her kennel “Tessier” boasts over 125 homebred champions.

She also further developed her love of all breeds and decided that this might be the niche that she had been looking for. Like Cassatt with her mothers and children, Bergstrom Mesmer would have her canines.

“In drawing dogs, I have always wanted to be accurate, but more. I want the observer to be able to see the twinkle in a dog’s eye -- or the mischief, as the case may be. I think it’s helpful that I am knee-deep in my dogs every day, so I can understand their considerable intelligence and personality. I want that to shine on paper.”

In 1994 Bergstrom Mesmer signed on with the Mace Kingsley Family Center, working with children and their families.  After a thorough apprenticeship, she went on the road, and for the next 20 years, clocked as much as 300 days a year living out of a suitcase.

“Traveling as much as I did it was important that I had very portable art materials and media that could fit in a suitcase. I have worked in some very odd places! A favorite is at 50,000 feet over the Pacific, as I go to Australia regularly. Anything that takes me from one destination to another feels like an ‘in-between’ space, empty of the hustle and bustle of life. I can settle into creating with no distractions. I discovered that pen and ink and watercolor pencils were ideal for such cramped quarters. Now I travel less than before, but I still love those media. They speak to me.”

No artist lives in a vacuum and Bergstrom Mesmer is no exception. A longtime member of the Dog Writers Association of America (despite its name, it also accepts artists) she won a “Maxwell” from them for her “Headshot Series, German Shepherd” in 2012. In 2020 she won her second Maxwell, and since has garnered two more.

  “I love paintings, but art cannot be confined to a wall. It also can be found in a great coffee cup, a flashy T-Shirt or even an award-winning coloring book. My constant is the dogs; splendid and steadfast, smart, sweet, soulful, sneaky, spunky, or sassy. I want my dogs so real that they jump off the page and demand to go out for walkies. And like Mary Cassatt, I want my subjects to be wonderfully realistic and approachable. My art is there to service and speed the message of my work, not to be an end in itself. My media is there to underscore the message.”

Here is Bergstrom Mesmer's Artist Statement:

I not only celebrate dogs with my art, but I also celebrate the canine-human bond.

I pick images to draw that showcase the canine personality and ones that capture an instant in time. I draw dogs mid-blink….or mid-leap. My dogs are so approachable they’ll jump off the page and ask to go for walkies.

A new series of mine is “Dogs in Motion”. These are watercolor pencils over pen and ink, meant to salute active dogs doing what they do best. I try to lock in that mid-leap moment. I want to showcase our whirling dervishes mid-stride, our kissing bandits mid-smooch.

My techniques are precise and detailed and just a smidge more than real. I like to crop my pieces tightly so the important is there, the incidental is not.

I usually adore the idea for a piece when I first think of it. But my process is exacting and as I work through a portrait inch by inch, hour by hour, I’m never really satisfied.  I tend to be “Oh, well, not too bad”…. until I prop up the piece and look at it from across the room. Then it’s “Who did that nice portrait? Geez! I did!”

What does the future hold for me? Well for starters, each piece takes me so long I doubt I’ll ever be rich; but it would be nice to be well known!  

• I want to finish my “Headshot” series with all the American Kennel Club breeds, I have done 195 of the 205 of them.
• I don’t think my “Dogs in Motion” series will be as substantial, but I know there’s enough material there for a long time.
• I have a small but growing clientele that wants original portraits of their dogs.
• I have never felt that the only way to appreciate good art is through original pieces, so I will grow my print, card, mug, and T-shirt collection available here.
• I am also working on a coloring book series called “Color Me Canine”, which will eventually cover all the AKC groups. I’ve done 4 books so far and the first won a Maxwell from the Dog Writer’s Association of America in 2020.

Marie Cassatt used light to create images, unafraid to experiment with new media. With her Japanese print series, she used precise lines to create images that popped off the page. She concentrated on one subject and did that beautifully.

My goal has never been to mirror Marie but to continue her legacy. Like her, I want to concentrate on a niche that I love. Create images that pop off the page. Experiment and use media that I can make sing. Make every line mean what it says.

Big shoulders to climb on, but it is what I intend to do.