Bio
Short Bio
Gabriella is an Oregon-based artist who finds inspiration from her local environment in the Pacific Northwest. She works in oil and water media from direct observation, memory, and field notes. She is married to the architect Michael Soraci (Agate Architecture) and is a mother to three children. When not painting or parenting, Gabriella enjoys reading in coffee shops, browsing bookstores, fitness classes and hiking, chocolate, and singing along to her favorite songs.
Long Bio
Born in 1979 to American parents living abroad at the Findhorn Foundation in Northern Scotland, Gabriella was raised in Eugene Oregon and educated at a Waldorf school until the age of 16. After graduating from the Eugene International High School summa cum laude, she attended Mount Holyoke College, the oldest all women’s college in the country. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Oregon in 2002 with a minor in Art History and studied abroad in Siena Italy. Her painting during this time explored abstract intuitive mark making that began with color and shape and were often inspired by art historical references and inner visions.
She earned her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of California Davis in 2007 where she was a teaching assistant to the late painter Wayne Thiebaud and received the Fay Nelson award from the combined visual arts faculty. During graduate school her work shifted focus to observational painting. She began to make still lives using overlooked and commonplace objects, and imbuing them with meaning through composition, attunement to basic geometric forms, and carefully considered limited color palettes.
After graduation Gabriella returned to Eugene where her husband, Michael Soraci, founded his firm Agate Architecture. She taught drawing, color theory, and painting at the University of Oregon and Lane Community College and her paintings were included in juried shows such as First Street Gallery, Prince Street Gallery, and the Bowery Gallery (all in New York, NY), and in invitational exhibitions such as “Painting the Familiar and the Ordinary: Contemporary Still Life” at Western Illinois University and “Everyday Inspiration: A Still Life Invitational” at Maude Kerns Gallery in Eugene Oregon. Artist residency awards include the Millay Colony for the Arts, the Ucross Foundation, the Hambidge Center for the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center.
In 2011 her daughter was born and her twin sons were born in 2018.
Currently Gabriella finds her inspiration from the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, specifically the world right outside her door or window, and is attuned to the contemplative, joyful, and poetic experience this provides. The common thread between bodies of work over the years is her interest in and response to color relationships, geometric forms, and composition, often reducing complex visual experiences to essential components, and infusing the commonplace with thought provoking resonance. She paints outdoors from observation, looking through windows in her car or home, and from memory, and combines these practices in her studio-based work. Gabriella welcomes creative collaborations with all artistic disciplines, opportunities for exhibitions and representation around the world, and is available for artist talks, workshops, and more.
Maude Kerns Art Center, November 2025