In California, warm golden light glides through palm fronds, weaves through wrought-iron doors, and bounces off the chrome of freshly waxed sedans. It makes purple jacarandas shine in spring and nourishes orange groves in winter. Although the Californian light is all-encompassing, it seems elusive. The magical light that is synonymous with California is the primary subject of many Southern California artists, who track it down and pin it on canvases, photographs and sculptures, hoping to thwart its escape from collective memory. .
Many artists have been drawn to California’s sunny landscapes. Light and Space Movement artists like James Turrell and Robert Irwin, who got their start in Southern California, are among the most famous practitioners who found ways to isolate the phenomenon by carving a portal into a ceiling or filtering it through a canvas. Others, like David Hockney, have mastered the art of capturing reflected sunlight in rippling pools.
As the art evolves, so do the methods of capturing this illustrious light. Contemporary artists like Sarah Cain, Hayley Barker and Gay Summer Rick showcase the way her colors bend and move through their murals, stained glass and paintings. Sculptor Gisela Colón traps her prismatic iridescence in her monolithic conical sculptures. The hyper-realistic works of painter Mario Ayala show how light radiates through the Chicanx culture.
Notably, all of these artists live and work in Los Angeles. The idea of California light doesn’t evoke foggy San Francisco, foggy Big Sur, or the snow-capped Sierras. It’s a Southern California feeling that leans toward the beaches of San Diego and the Mojave Desert. It combines the two opposing polar climates into a non-existent place that radiates warmth, awe and wonder.
“I like to watch the sunrise as much as possible,” said painter Hayley Barker, who uses purple and pink tones to accent the verdant gardens that overrun LA bungalows. Hyperallergic. “It’s a way of trying to ground myself and start the day on the right note. It’s a way of connecting with my spirituality.
Barker’s connection to faith via sunlight is a common practice shared by many Southern California artists. The mystical glow also figures prominently in the paintings of desert transcendentalist Agnes Pelton, the divine drawings of occultist Marjorie Cameron (who was known simply as Cameron), and the fantastical landscapes of contemporary painter Ariana Papademetropoulos. These three women have spent much of their lives in Pasadena, and Barker herself paints from the San Gabriel foothills, less than five miles from this hotbed of esoteric art.
Sarah Cain, on the other hand, has always been drawn to bright, warm, emotive colors, even while working in her hometown of Albany, New York. His move to Los Angeles was inspired by friends and gallery owners who saw the personality of the city in his abstract paintings. Although she had already shown work for a decade, once Cain moved on, her work took off.
“I moved here in 2007 and things got a lot bolder,” Cain said. “Los Angeles was incredibly big for me, even just driving here. I thought I was going to die of a heart attack every time.
“I grew up on a dirt road and my nerve endings aren’t made for the city. But I think I was able to channel that into work and focus more,” she added.
Cain sees his strength as a colorist and hand-mixes vibrant shades of pinks, reds and purples that scream loudly, yet pleasingly, even when accompanied by blues and blacks. Although primarily a painter, she also captured the California light with stained glass, amplifying it even more with her color schemes. Sometimes she combines prisms with glassware, casting the full spectrum of visible light onto her artificial spectrum, bathing a gallery in joyful, chaotic light.
As beautiful as the Californian light may seem, it is also the product of some of the worst qualities of city life. Smog, wildfires and dust add an eerie gray tone to brilliant pink and orange sunsets. Gay Summer Rick, an Inglewood-based painter for more than a decade, captures these colors as they filter through airplane exhaust at Los Angeles International Airport. Using palette knives to paint, she stipples darker colors over a light basecoat, the spaces resembling particulate matter floating in the sky. Rick captures the enchantment of industrialization, which could ultimately transform the future of Californian light.
Greg Ito’s paintings capture the apocalyptic perspective of this phenomenon. In his graphic landscapes, cartoonish flames engulf hillside homes, illustrating the wildfires that eat away at the Santa Monica Mountains year after year. He also portrays rising tides, licking the legs of a Windsor chair in “The Key” (2020). The sun and moon lurk in the background, casting a vibrant light over the destroyed environment. Even the apocalypse becomes an ambitious dream world when blanketed in Californian light.
To view California light solely as pure, positive energy is to ignore some of the most challenging social and environmental issues affecting this region. It’s a spotlight on the hardest-hit communities, including the nation’s largest homeless people, who are exposed to high temperatures. Undocumented immigrants, fearing deportation, seek refuge in the shadows of a sweltering garment factory as they work for inhuman wages. Heat waves, among the worst in history, sizzle from the overgrown, water-sucking palm trees that have defined the iconic landscape.
Yet, as all of the aforementioned artists can attest, there’s no denying that light is a source of inspiration. Its magic is what keeps these artists painting.
“I try to focus on the more positive aspects of the natural environment, the elements, the particles in the atmosphere, that are less of a concern,” Rick said.
For now, it’s best to take advantage of the Californian light before it’s lost to sea layer, or smoke and mist, for its transcendent nature that pulls you away from this earthly plane. Its glow makes everything magical – a sickly houseplant, a lizard basking in the sun, or an oil rig pumping black gold.
This article was made possible with the support of Sam Francis Foundation in honor of Sam Francis’ 100th birthday.
