ARTIST STATEMENT

I LOVE L.A. Really. 

I grew up and have lived most of my life in this city. I am a 5th generation Angelino on both my father’s and mother’s side. My ancestors arrived in the 1880’s when Los Angeles was a town of a few thousand. They helped grow it into a great city. I am trying to do my part to both make it an even better place (I chair RiverLA, the non profit group that is helping to transform the L.A. River and its 51mile corridor) and celebrate L.A. imagery in my art.

Some of the themes for my Southern California-art making focus have been movement, saturated colors, magic, impermanence, myth making, and the iconic landscapes and people. 

 I want my works to both bring a smile of delight with their visual freshness and to evoke a deeper, contemplative thought.   My color palette has been influenced by the bright, saturated warm tones in this city of sunshine. They speak of optimism and passion to me.

L.A. is both my muse and my subject. I revel in the fun, sexy, noir, irreverent, iconographic images of Southern California: cars, freeways, swimming pools, beaches, Hollywood, and the Pacific ocean.

For my Autopia series, I invented mythical Southern California urban landscapes where I painted saturated-color, agricultural fields over aerial photos of the curvy freeway interchanges.

In my Pacific Shimmers and I Call In The Ocean Voices series, I celebrate the Pacific ocean waves, using new techniques to explore depth and movement.

For my Water’s Edge series, I chose an aerial perspective on swimming pools adorned with bathers and floaters.

For my MashUp series, I took famous landscape paintings from history and remixed them with California landscape icons.

My most complex works employ mixed media, LEDs, and software programs: Hollywoodland, a multimedia homage to the famous sign, Fade to Memory, a mixed media homage to 35mm cinema and my days working as a Hollywood producer, Search Queries, a work inspired from when I worked with online search engines, and a ‘moving’ ocean work: 5 Oceans, 5 Senses.

I have also photographed many interesting people here. Check out my Dreamers in Dream City book.