Berit Kruger-Johnsen grew up in the Oslo region of Norway, where she had ready access to the sea, the forest, and the mountains. With no other artists around, save for her grandfather, who had gone mad and been institutionalized, art was stigmatized in her family, and so she translated his love of nature into studying biology in school instead. After graduation, though, she decided to pursue drawing and design and was accepted into the only graphic design school (at the time) in Oslo, which gave her a strong base in illustration.

After working in advertising for a year, Kruger-Johnsen became a freelance illustrator. Always one to travel extensively, she fell in love in Australia and has been there ever since, though she still makes frequent trips to Norway. In her work, she uses a combination of gouache and oil to create nostalgic, dramatically lit compositions, and her interest in the power of visual symbols that cross cultures and tell stories takes center stage in each of her works. She plays with these symbols and with the narratives of other historically created symbols, investigating the notion that at some level we all seem to have a shared visual library that is strongly tied to emotion.