Cherisse Alcantara

Cherisse Alcantara (b. Philippines) is a Filipina American painter based in San Francisco. Informed by her experiences as an 'adoptee' and feelings residing in a mobile contemporary world, her works are poetic and reimagined depictions of her surroundings' constructed and natural world, reflecting on home, presence, feelings of loss and ungroundedness, and the complex search for rootedness and belonging. 

She received her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (2021) and BA from the University of California-Berkeley (2013). Alcantara is the recipient of the Wendy Sussman Prize in Painting (UC Berkeley), the Dessner Memorial Travel Award (PAFA), and the Balay Kreative Growth Grant. She has been awarded artist residencies at Jentel (Wyoming) and Chalk Hill (California). The artist’s work has been published in 48 Hills and shown in museums and galleries locally and nationally, including The de Young Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, Berkeley Art Center, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

While grounded in observation, my paintings are poetic and reimagined depictions of my surroundings' constructed and natural world, reflecting upon home, place, presence, and the complex search for rootedness and belonging. My art is informed by my complicated experiences as an 'adoptee' from a fragmented background and experiences residing in a mobile contemporary world, feeling disconnected from the here and now, compounded by my immigrant experience. There is loss and trauma, often unacknowledged, in the 'adoptee experience,' and I've usually felt ungrounded and dislocated. Paying deep attention to the details within the ordinary and every day allows me to locate myself and reconnect. Lacking familial roots that I can hold onto and seeking a semblance of identity, I find rootedness that heals my relationship with the land by finding kinship with natural things like plants and trees. I often depict homes and built spaces, including the ones I've lived in, looking at them from the outside with a yearning yet distant gaze. These works are internal landscapes and personal expressions conveyed through color, the visual language of, and the rich history of painting.