Andra Norris Gallery is delighted to present Second nature, a collection of nature-centric and landscape paintings from four highly acclaimed contemporary Bay Area artists.

Brooks Anderson’s eloquent realist paintings explore California’s land, sea, and sky, while simultaneously considering human nature, including its longings and desires. The substantive works are painted with oil on canvas or wood panels, and they continue the artist’s themes of California sunsets and its crystalline coastlines, estuaries, and beaches.

Elizabeth Geisler’s dazzling contemporary water reflection acrylic paintings bridge realism with abstraction. Up close, the paintings appear ambiguous and loose, yet with a little distance, clear impressions of moving water emerge. Viewers simultaneously experience glistening patterns on the water’s surface and light moving through its depths while reflecting nature all around. For Geisler, water represents life, as it flows across the Earth and through each of us. She seeks to showcase the beauty and intricate tapestry that nature provides through water’s musical rhythm and restorative properties. This is the artist’s first formal exhibition with the gallery.

Peter Loftus’ impressionistic landscape oil paintings depict the majesty of our contemporary living and breathing planet. Often created on a grand scale, the paintings invite viewers to “walk” into the scene. Warm, invigorating, and nearly photographic at a distance, the images dissolve into a mysterious abstraction upon close inspection. Faithfully representing the light from real-world scenes is at the heart of Loftus’ picture-making, as it is the light and atmosphere, he notes, that is more vital to our sense of place than the physical character of the land.

Stephanie Peek’s oil paintings speak metaphorically of the fragile beauty and ephemeral nature of the world. Her scenes are suffused with a theatrical air and concentrate on exotic wildflowers and plants that are often floating, to reveal their beauty while suspended in silence. Other works depict stacks of eucalyptus leaves under varying lighting conditions that are both natural and man-made. Inspired by French and Dutch still-life paintings from the turn of the 18th century, Peek is celebrated for her romantic, poetic, and mysterious imagery, where light and drama mingle to play central roles.