My work is shaped by lived experience and memory. Through painting, I return to moments that draw me, allowing the personal to transform into something shared.
My Story
My paintings explore the interior landscape of experience, where memory, perception, and the present moment converge. Rooted in lived experience, my work attends to the quiet thresholds where identity is continually forming and reforming. I’m interested in moments of transition, where the boundaries between inner life and the external world feel fluid, and where memory is felt rather than clearly recalled.
I work primarily in oil on linen, painting from live models, preparatory sketches, and memory. My process is slow and layered, shaped by repeated acts of looking, revision, and restraint. I build form through thin passages of paint, glazes, and subtle shifts in value, allowing light and shadow to carry emotional weight. Edge control plays a quiet but essential role, guiding attention while leaving space for ambiguity.
Narrative figurative elements often dissolve into abstract passages. I use erasure, scraping, and intuitive mark-making to interrupt clarity, allowing figures to hover between presence and dissolution. These moments of disruption are integral to the work, reflecting the instability and fragmentation of memory itself. The surface of the painting becomes a record of decisions, revisions, and uncertainty held in tension.
Throughout my work, I’m interested in how the body holds experience over time. The figures are not portraits in a traditional sense, but vessels for internal states, carrying traces of past and present simultaneously. Rather than fixed identities, they inhabit moments of becoming, where the border between self and world remains porous.
Through this integration of observation, memory, and material process, I aim to create a space for quiet attention. I want the paintings to invite viewers to slow down, sit with ambiguity, and recognize something of their own interior landscape reflected back to them.
CV
Chenoa Grace Warner
Chenoa Grace is a realist painter from the San Francisco Bay area.
She graduated from Academy of Art University in 2013 with a BFA concentrating on painting. Chenoa is originally from Santa Cruz California and is inspired by the beautiful California landscape as well as the people and experiences that color the dynamic area.
Education:
2013 BFA Fine Art Painting & Drawing - Academy of Art University, San Francisco, CA
2008 AA, Cabrillo - College Aptos, CA
Exhibitions:
2023 Painting the Figure NOW, Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art, Wausau, WI
2023 Artists Painting Artists, 33 Contemporary, Chicago, IL
2023 Wonder Woman, 33 Contemporary, Chicago ,IL
2023 Pride Art Gala, ACE New Jersey, Nutley, NJ
2023 Werk A Celebration of LGBTQ+ art Denville,NJ
2023 Multi Figure, Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, OH
2022 Open Studio, Monmouth County Arts Council, Asbury Park ,NJ
2019 Academy of Art University, 'Faculty and Alumni Show, San Francisco, CA
2019 Rare Device, 'In a Warmer Place' San Francisco, CA
2019 Solo Show, San Benito Arts Council, Reverie' Hollister, CA
2016 STUDIO Gallery, 'Figurative' San Francisco, CA
2015 Solo Show, Pacific Grove Arts League, Pacific Grove CA
2014 STUDIO Gallery, 'Tiny' San Francisco, CA
2013 University Art, Juried Art Show
2012 Art Kudos, Online Juried Art Show
2012 Bold Brush, Monthly art competition
2012 The Cannery, 'AAU Annual Spring Show', San Francisco, CA
2012 Collector, 'Affordable Original Art', Berkeley, CA
2011 STUDIO Gallery, 'Tiny', San Francisco, CA
2011 AAU Gallery, 'Small Works Show', San Francisco, CA
2011 The Garden Gallery, '402 Collective Group Show', Half Moon Bay, CA
Awards:
2023 Beautiful Bizarre Magazine Art Prize- Honorable Mention award by Editor in Chief of Beautiful Bizarre Magazine
2016 Bold Brush- Finalist, 'Reverie'
2012 Academy Of Art University Spring Show-1st Place Traditional Art, ' Reverie'