About

Bio
Cherisse Alcantara is a Filipina-American painter whose luminous and deeply observed oil paintings transform everyday encounters with place into quiet meditations on home, impermanence, and the search for rootedness. Drawing on imagery of horizons, shifting light, nature, water, and built environments, her work returns to moments of transition and ordinary events as a means of exploring the act of searching and inhabiting the space of contemplation. Working through layered surfaces and attentive handling of color and atmosphere, Alcantara distills fleeting perception into sustained visual attention and invites the viewer to witness the passage of time and find a quiet awareness of being amidst change and vastness.

Cherisse received her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (2021) and BA from the University of California-Berkeley (2013). She is the recipient of the Wendy Sussman Prize in Painting (UC Berkeley) and the Dessner Memorial Travel Award (PAFA). She has held residencies at Jentel (WY) and Chalk Hill (CA). Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries across the country, including the de Young Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Pence Gallery, Sanchez Art Center, and Berkeley Art Center. Alcantara’s work is in the collection of the San Francisco Arts Commission. She was born in the Philippines and raised both there and in the United States. An arts educator, Alcantara lives and works in San Francisco, CA.