Chris Brandell’s paintings combine gestural mark-making, drawing, texture, and expanses of negative space in compositions that move between energy and stillness. Working in oil and mixed media, she develops each painting through a fluid, responsive process.
Her visual language grows from intuitive engagement with the natural world in her surroundings—shells, driftwood, broken concrete, bits of wire, and other found fragments—as well as poetry, music, and words. These influences inform her use of shape, line, texture, and gesture.
Brandell works from her studio in Marco Island, Florida. A full-time artist since 2019, her work is held in private and corporate collections, including Southern Methodist University, Pi Beta Phi (Texas), and The Silva and The Edge (Maryland).
My work explores the many forms of love, guided by intuition and grounded in presence. Using oil and mixed media, I approach each painting as a process of discovery without a predetermined outcome. A drawing often begins the composition and may remain visible or disappear beneath layers of paint. I allow marks to arrive through gesture and movement.
I am influenced by the natural world, poetry, music, words, and the overlooked forms and surfaces I encounter in everyday life. These references are rarely literal; instead, they become points of departure for paintings that move between stillness and energy, certainty and the unknown.
At the center of my practice is trust: listening rather than planning and allowing the painting to reveal what it needs. I follow where the work takes me, knowing that love is part of every discovery and remains with the painting.
ARTIST STATEMENT
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2026: Spring Fling (5 Artists), Gardner Colby Gallery, Naples, Florida
2025: Season Opening Exhibition, Gardner Colby Gallery, Naples, Florida
2024: Season Opening Exhibition, Gardner Colby Gallery, Naples, Florida
2022: Sightseeing (3 Artists), Huff Harrington Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia
2022: Right Here All Along (2 Artists), Palette Home, Richmond, Virginia
2022: Art2Life International Juried Art Exhibition, curated by Jack Fischer
2022: The Architecture of Healing (4 Artists), Sozo Gallery, Charlotte, North Carolina
2021: Found Objects (Solo), Palette Home, Richmond, Virginia
2021: The Words (Solo), The Athenaeum, Alexandria, Virginia
2020: Perspective & Prose (4 Artists), Sozo Gallery, Charlotte, North Carolina
COLLECTIONS
— Southern Methodist University, Pi Beta Phi, Dallas, Texas
— The Silva (Adams Morgan), Washington, DC.
— The Edge, Bethesda, Maryland
— Ninotch, An Urban Retreat, Tysons Corner, Virginia
— The Asbury, Charlotte, North Carolina
REPRESENTATION
— Gardner Colby Gallery, Naples, Florida
— Huff Harrington Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia
— Galerie Odette (earlier works) Birmingham, Alabama