DEEP ROOTS

JANUARY 13 – FEBRUARY 16, 2024

Opening Reception Saturday, January 13, 4-6 PM — Please join us!

CHARLOTTE BERNSTROM

ALYSON BELCHER

GAIL CHASE BIEN

CHIKAKO OKADA

Andra Norris Gallery is delighted to begin the new year with Deep Roots — an exhibition featuring new paintings, photography, and drawings from four exceptional contemporary artists whose inspiring works consider the fragility and ephemerality of the natural environment.

CHARLOTTE BERNSTROM 

Swedish-American Charlotte Bernstrom continues her poetic explorations depicting nature and humanity’s place within it. Taking cues from both Abstract Expressionism and Impressionism, she juxtaposes nature-inspired fields of color over stained and textured canvas. The emotive paintings, with their complex, earth-like surfaces, evoke an emotional response that leads viewers toward a consciousness of their place in the natural world.

ALYSON BELCHER

Alyson Belcher’s Ice Portals record the unique ice formations that the artist discovered during her early morning walks throughout the unusually cold winter of 2017 in Bend, Oregon. The artist visited the same location each day to find a completely new and dramatic configuration that resulted from the slow thawing and refreezing of snow and ice.

Since the late 1870s, photography has been used to capture ephemeral things that are invisible to the naked eye. Camera technology has given us the ability to see the world from extreme perspectives, from the smallest of microscopic details to vast aerial landscapes. Each of the topographic studies in Ice Portals is an abstract landscape that challenges our sense of scale. The lines, shapes, and textures combined with the mysterious qualities of light and shadow create a confusing space that is fragile and fleeting.

GAIL CHASE BIEN

Gail Chase Bien’s new oil paintings and pastels consider nature's extraordinary visual offerings, the dazzling play of light intersecting with water and earth in particular, by combining elements of realism and abstraction. Complex, rich, and slow in the making, these serene works — conjured from the artist’s imagination — are intended to be experienced over time.

CHIKAKO OKADA 

Japanese artist Chikako Okada’s autobiographical drawings and paintings merge realism with surrealism. Okada uniquely addresses facets of the human condition embracing feminine power, vulnerability, longing, and desire. This exhibition includes a new suite of four drawings, each featuring a young woman stylized with a Heart, Spade, Diamond, or Club motif. The artist’s signature symbolism and mesmerizing detail leave the women’s mysterious circumstances to the viewer's interpretation.

The gallery is open now with regular business hours for an early preview of the exhibition.

For more information, please contact Andra Norris.

ANDRA NORRIS GALLERY

311 Lorton Avenue

Burlingame, CA 94010

gallery: 650 235 9775

info@andranorrisgallery.com