Cynthia Wennstrom is a visual artist based in Oakland, California.

Artist Statement

My paintings investigate the space between visibility and invisibility, between the surface we show the world and the layered inner life we carry. Using bold, flattened forms and soft surrealist gestures, I explore the psychological and spiritual terrain of identity, memory, and transformation. Drawing from dream work, Jungian psychology, and ancestral lore, my work blends minimal compositions with emotionally complex symbols—plants, clouds, water, and light—to invite viewers into quiet portals of reflection. I often work with stylized portraits, reducing or masking the face not to erase the self, but to reveal what lies beneath. These images are a practice in holding contradiction: they are intimate and universal, soft and assertive, abstract and rooted in the body.

Bio

Cynthia Wennstrom is an Oakland-based multidisciplinary artist working at the intersection of painting, music, and design. She creates from a place of curiosity and reverence for the unseen.

Selected Exhibitions & Honors

A Quiet Bear Collective, Space on White, New York, NY — 2013

twenty2, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Palazzetto Tito, Venice, Italy — 2010

Awesome Thesis, Commons Gallery, New York University, New York, NY — 2010

Senior Exhibition, UCLA Department of Art, Los Angeles, CA — 2007

Best Illustration, California Colleges Media Competition — 2005

Education

M.A. in Art Education, New York University — 2010

B.A. in Art, University of California, Los Angeles — 2007