About the Artist

Artist · Ojai, California

My work begins with looking.

Christine Apostolina Beirne is a California artist whose work begins with observation. Working in drawing and painting, she is interested in the experience of looking closely at a place—its shapes, values, rhythms and color—and in what remains after the initial moment of seeing has passed.

Beirne has long worked directly from the landscape, painting en plein air and developing larger studio paintings from her experiences in the field. In recent years, drawing has become an increasingly important part of that process. Her ongoing Morning Practice began as a disciplined way of looking: small grayscale drawings made with fineliner and Copic markers that reduce complex landscapes to a limited range of values. What started as a daily practice has grown into an extensive visual record of places encountered close to home and while traveling.

Travel is integral to Beirne’s work. She draws and paints landscapes encountered firsthand, building an evolving visual atlas through journeys across the American West, Canada and Alaska. In 2025, a 99-day journey took her north through Canada and Alaska to the Arctic Ocean and back, while more recent travels have continued through the national parks and landscapes of the West. Each journey adds new observations of place, gathered through drawing and painting.

Her Observation series carries this process into larger, more abstracted paintings. Rather than reproducing a landscape, Beirne returns to the underlying structure she discovered through drawing—value, shape, line and memory—and allows the painting to become something new. Her work moves between recognition and abstraction while remaining rooted in a particular place and a particular act of looking.

Beirne earned a B.A. in Art from California State University Channel Islands and has continued her studies through workshops with nationally recognized artists.

Her work has been exhibited at the Ojai Valley Museum, Studio Channel Islands Art Center, Santa Paula Art Museum, Museum of Ventura County, Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts and Axis Gallery. In 2026, she was selected as one of thirteen Studio Channel Islands artists represented on Artsy. Her work is held in the permanent collections of Community Memorial Hospital, Ventura College and the Breckenridge Group, with public art at California State University Channel Islands and Harbor Village. She lives and works in Ojai, California.

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Christine welcomes collectors and visitors to her Ojai studio by appointment.

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