Biography

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 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during this time explored abstract intuitive mark making that began with color and shape and were often inspired by art historical references and inner visions. Gabriella went on to earn her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of California Davis 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 metaphor, mysticism and 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. After the birth of the twins, Gabriella took a pause in her painting practice to focus on motherhood and raising her family. With her oldest now in high school and the twins in elementary school, she paints with a focus on the Oregon landscape, specifically the world right outside her door or window, and the contemplative, joyful, and poetic experience that landscape can provoke. The common thread between bodies of work 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 a spiritual resonance. She paints outdoors en plein air, from observation looking through windows, and from memory, and combines these practices in her studio-based work. Gabriella sells her work directly through her website and Square shop, and is available for artist talks, private lessons, and workshops.

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