"Sunlight" Painting

BIOGRAPHY

Native San Franciscan Christine So is a photographer, printmaker and painter. She is best known for her cyanotypes of forests shrouded in fog at dawn. These contemplative landscapes taken on solitary walks are her most personal works and the subject she has focused on since her husband’s death in 2022.


Hers is a lifelong love affair with trees. Living in the woods across the bay in Oakland for 28 years, she has hiked the same trails so many times she knows every tree. She prints her landscapes using the antique cyanotype process and giant negatives outdoors in sunlight. She attended California College of the Arts in Oakland, California, la Facultad de Bellas Artes of La Universidad Complutense in Madrid, and San Francisco State University.


Christine So’s cyanotypes are in private collections in 15 countries and in dozens of hotels and hospitals across the United States. Shortlisted for the Royal Photographic Society’s International Photography Exhibition 167 in the UK, she is represented by more than one gallery in the U.S. with an upcoming 2027 solo exhibition in Alameda, California and publication in All About Photo magazine Volume 60: Nature.


ARTIST STATEMENT

I became a widow quite suddenly at an age when no one expected it, least of all my girls. Walking in the woods near my house has been my refuge and renewal. The title of my series, "And the Sun Will Rise," is part of a phrase by Victor Hugo, “Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.” Every one of my landscapes is a sunrise. Every scene I photograph a potential metaphor. I walk at sunrise when the forest is empty and blanketed in white mist. My forest hikes reassure me of the constance of nature. The endless cycle of life. The promise of a new day. The woods where I walk were cut down 150 years ago to build San Francisco, but they have regrown. These are the children of the trees that once stood there.