About

Grace Gamboa is a Santa Cruz–based artist, leadership coach, and facilitator whose work explores the meeting place between the natural world and human transformation. A former teacher at Esalen Institute and faculty collaborator at 1440 Multiversity, she brings decades of experience in conscious leadership, somatic psychology, and creative embodiment to her art.

Rooted in transformation, embodiment, and reverence for the living world, her paintings invite viewers to sense the sacred intelligence alive in all forms and to see our shared ecology as both mirror and muse.

Her current series, Faces of Nature, is painted on reclaimed palm fronds; living remnants of California’s coastal ecology. Using oils and mixed media, she merges human portraiture with elemental and animal imagery to reflect cycles of awakening, protection, and renewal. Each image rises from the wood’s organic texture, guided by the grain’s own lines and weathering, revealing both strength and tenderness.