Downtown Los Angeles' Corey Helford Gallery (CHG) is proud to announce its next major exhibition by contemporary surrealist painter Jana Brike, titled When I Was a River, set to debut on October 11^th in Gallery 3.

Brike's art is a reflection of profoundly human experiences—love and loss, womanhood and sisterhood, motherhood, pain, mortality, and the spiritual awakenings that come through life's inner journeys. Her creative process is at once grounding and transcendent, tethering her to the physical reality of existence while offering a path beyond suffering through acceptance, clarity, and insight.

Born in 1980 in Soviet-occupied Latvia, Brike paints with a language of personal symbolism. Her works weave together themes of growth, innocence, and transcendence, often expressed through mythological archetypes and imagery drawn from the natural world. In the face of Soviet restrictions, she turned to nature as both sanctuary and muse—a presence that remains central to her artistic vision.

Regarding her new works, Brike shares, "This contemplative body of work is a visual meditation on the four primal elements—Earth, Air, Fire, and Water—understood as sacred symbols of the human journey. Each painting becomes a threshold where the visible and the invisible meet, where nature is not simply matter that surrounds us, but a mirror of our deepest inner truths.

The Earth is more than soil—it carries the weight of memory, grounding us in our bodies and in belonging. Air moves beyond wind; it holds thought, inspiration, unseen currents of emotion, and the breath that stirs the sky. Fire is not only light and destruction, but the energy of transformation, passion, and the alchemy of desire, will, and awakening. Water, forever shifting, speaks of feeling, surrender, and the unseen depths that shape our becoming.

Witness how rhythms, textures, and seasons of the natural world echo our internal landscapes. Nature is not separate from us, but rather, a sacred extension of our own inner weather and shifting seasons. Here, the boundaries between self and world soften—what is seen reflects what is felt. In this quiet exchange, spirit takes form, and the soul remembers its place within the greater whole."

Open to the public and free to attend, When I Was a River is set to debut on Saturday, October 11^th from 7:00 pm – 11:00 pm in Gallery 3, alongside a dual solo show by world-renowned Nigerian hyper-realist artists Arinze Stanley and Oscar Ukonu, titled The Weight of US in the Main Gallery and a solo show by Japanese artist aica, titled Where Petals Dance, in Gallery 2. 

All shows will be on view at CHG through November 15^th.

About Jana Brike:

Born in 1980 in Riga, Latvia, Jana Brike studied academic painting at the Art Academy of Latvia, where she earned her Master of Arts degree in 2005. Her main interest is visual art with a strong narrative and depiction of a figure, mostly using the traditional medium of oil painting on canvas. The artist has also explored other mediums, such as drawing, animation, mixed media sculpture, installation, and digital art. The main focus of Brike's art is the internal space and state of a human soul—dreams, longing, love, pain, and the vast range of emotions the human condition offers and the transcendence of them all. Her work is her poetic visual autobiography.

Since 1996, Brike has had 15 solo exhibitions and more than 100 other projects (including group exhibitions) all over the world. Plus, her work has been profiled by Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, Hi-Fructose, American Art Collector, Metal Magazine, GQ Brazil, and more.