While his images have sometimes been striking, even aggressive, his ardour is tempered by an appreciation of simpler styles of life. In his café series, Bergur has nurtured this approach for almost a decade and a half, bringing to life tableaux that breathe of relaxed and intimate moments, the simple pleasures of companionship enjoyed over a cup of coffee. In a modest tradition that encompasses the literary cafés of nineteenth-century Paris and Lisbon but is shared in every anonymous roadside coffeehouse, this meeting of public and private life crystallises and resolves the contradictions of our various personae: An intimate contact shared on a crowded square or at an anonymous counter in a terminal. Painting these images with coffee is much more than a clever twist, a conceptual cliché. It captures the contemplative moment perfectly, the simple but sophisticated pleasure of the café and the self-contained world of friends or lovers sitting with their cups a corner table, freed for awhile from the bustle of the streets. The dark-brown lines and pale shapes of the pictures, drawn and filled in with coffee, allow us to dwell on the moment without worrying about the outside world or the problems of our own lives: The contradictions are suspended and what is revealed instead is a purely human pleasure, an aesthetic celebration of simplicity.

Quote from J. Proppé on Thorbergs paintings.