About

Bio
Cherisse Alcantara is a Filipina-American painter whose luminous and deeply observed oil paintings of her surroundings are meditations on home, dwelling, transience, and the search for rootedness and belonging. Paying attention to nature, place, and the quiet, everyday moments of life becomes a path to reconnect with the present, restore one's relationship with the land, ground identity, and anchor memory. The act of painting becomes a way to inhabit these questions—to feel one’s way into them— and to offer something back to the world.

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 been awarded artist residencies at Jentel (Wyoming) and Chalk Hill (California). Her work has been published in 48 Hills as well as shown in museums and galleries locally and nationally, 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. 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.