Bernice Bing

Burney Falls

Bernice Bing, affectionately known as “Bingo,” was a major Abstract Expressionist painter in the Bay Area. Orphaned at an early age and raised in the foster care system, Bing felt disconnected from her Chinese heritage. However, through art and the guidance of mentors like Saburo Hasegawa, she was able to reconnect with her multicultural and queer life experiences. Burney Falls demonstrates this reconciliation through Bing’s use of gestural brushstrokes—a common technique in Chinese landscape painting and calligraphy—to depict her beloved California landscape. The rushing water is made still in one contemplative moment, a unity of her identities.