A woman smiling and holding paintbrushes in front of her face in an art studio with vases of flowers and paintings of flowers in the background.

Christine Mercer-Vernon is an award-winning oil painter based in south central Pennsylvania. Her paintings are a direct conversation with nature, grounded in quiet observation, cycles of renewal, and the building of narrative over time.

Time spent in the garden informs her floral paintings with a deep understanding of her subjects and the insects and pollinators that visit them. She paints flowers from her own garden and a few surrounding farms, focusing only on native and locally grown plants. Insects, drawn in graphite, serve as environmental subtext—lightly embedded into the narrative to allude to the precarious future of pollinators.

Christine’s paintings have been exhibited in galleries and exhibitions throughout the eastern U.S. and across the country in multiple museum exhibitions with American Women Artists. Her work has been featured in Fine Art Connoisseur, Realism Today, and Balance Magazine.

In addition to her florals, she has spent over twenty years studying animal skulls and bones from life and documenting them through drawing and painting. Her signature bone palette utilizes three unique colors to create a limited range of grays that replicate the nuanced color of naturally aged bone.

Through the quiet study of flowers and bones, she reflects on time, fragility, and renewal—a reminder that nature gifts us beauty in the smallest of moments.

If you’d like to learn more about her process, start here: