About Gianne
“A garden can hold emotional resonance, intimacy and openness simultaneously: it is both shelter and passage, memory and transformation. The garden is a limited space within which we try to hold onto something that continuously escapes us. Perhaps this is what keeps bringing me back to gardens. Not simply to represent nature, but to search for a possible form of belonging, of home.”
Biography
Gianne de Genevraye is an international painter who works in oil and casein on linen and dry pastel mediums. She is invited to paint in residency in public gardens around the world. Painting gardens explores her inner landscape and her quest for a feeling of belonging. “Every garden is my home.”
Gianne received her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of California, Irvine, studying under contemporary masters Judy Chicago, Tony DeLap, Craig Kaufman, and John Paul Jones. She was an Invited Artist at the American Academy of Rome. Her work is present in private and public collections in the UK, USA, France, Italy, Mexico and Japan. She divides her time between Southern California, France and Venice, Italy.
She recently had a painting accepted into the national archive at the Richard Nixon Garden and Library. Her paintings have been included in the Laguna Museum of Art for the California Cool auction for the past 6 years. She has painted in residency in over 25 public gardens around the world, most recently residencies at the Ruth Bancroft Garden in California, the city of EZE in the south of France, La Mortella Gardens on the island of Ischia, IT, and at the Villa les Camélias where she had a solo exhibition in 2025 at the Musée du Cap d’Ail. Gianne has exhibited her paintings at the John Wayne Airport in California, Municipal Library of Menton, The Newport Beach Library. A solo exhibition of 20 paintings opened January 2026 at the USC Verdugo Hills Hospital Foundation Keck Medicine and will remain in place for one year. Dedicated to sharing her technique, Gianne continues teaching at the Annenberg Foundation, the Laguna Community Center, the Sherman Gardens in California, and Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. Her solo exhibitions include public conferences on artist process, sustainability, and pastel technique workshops. Gianne is currently represented by Skidmore Gallery, Laguna Beach, California.
Read a text I wrote about on my work: