Photo credit: Jillian Fraker
Christine has worked in mixed media since her college years and has devoted herself to oil painting for more than a decade. Descended from three generations of oil painters on her mother's side, she is drawn again and again to water: its presence, its absence, and the longing for it. Her landscapes often linger at the threshold of rivers, shorelines, marshes, and distant horizons, where something deeper lies just beyond view.
Christine lives in El Cerrito, California, with her wife and their three children. For many years, her paintings were filled with winding pathways and mysterious distances. Looking back, she recognizes that these images were quietly searching for something she could not yet name. Beneath the surface of the water, beyond the bend in the trail, her work suggested unseen worlds and untold stories.
Painting has seen her through profound transitions. During the years she came out to her community and found her life partner, she turned to a daily painting practice as a way of listening, grounding, and making sense of change. The canvas became both witness and companion.
Now, as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, Christine paints from a place of greater clarity. Her work holds both the wonder of belonging and the ache of exclusion, carrying the memory of places and communities that could not always make room for her full self. Rather than turning away from that complexity, she allows it to deepen her vision.
Her paintings invite viewers into landscapes where beauty and sorrow coexist, where still waters conceal entire ecosystems below, and where every path leads toward both mystery and clarity. Through layers of color, light, and texture, Christine explores the tender truth that joy and grief are not opposites but companions, intertwined currents in the same enduring river of a life fully lived.
“Lisa and I were both very impressed with your paintings. We like the softness of your scenes. They're contemplative and inviting. Lonely, but warm.” Painting customer Steve Appler
Please contact Christine directly about purchasing paintings. christinebraunohler@gmail.com