Billis/Williams Gallery is pleased to present Lindsey Warren: Somewhere, Here, the gallery’s fourth solo exhibition by the Los Angeles-based painter. The exhibition features ten new oil paintings exploring the singular landscape of Los Angeles through light, color, and form. The exhibitions opens with a reception on October 17th and continues through November 14th.
Lindsey Warren depicts real places she encounters in her daily life in a distinctive representational painting style. Warren finds her painting references while exploring streets and trails in the hilly Mt Washington neighborhood near her home. Many of the locales are only accessible on foot – making them feel like secret discoveries. Warren is focused on particular characteristics of familiar trees that become the subject of these portrait-like paintings. The color of each tree is determined by its specific lighting environment, such as the golden glow of sunset that makes a green tree appear red or a streetlight that artificially spotlights a shaggy palm. The ubiquitous flora feels familiar to any viewer who knows Southern California, creating a tension between personal discovery and shared experience.
Utilizing a deliberate simplification of form and dramatic color changes, Warren catalogues personally significant places and captures the transformative nature of time in her paintings. In addition to taking reference photos, Warren closely observes, later comparing the photos to her recollection of the place. The resulting paintings are interpretations of memories with details added and subtracted throughout the painting process.
Oil paint is essential to Warren’s practice, allowing her to move between quick, intuitive gestures and slower, methodical processes. She begins with thin layers of carefully blended color to create gradients and quick sketches to establish the composition. Once the whole surface is covered, she responds to the marks made in the first pass, adjusting hues, shapes, and drawing elements as the painting develops. Photographic references combine with memory and Warren’s background in observational painting to reduce details to their essential components. Trees and buildings are pared down to simplified shapes to maintain focus on the interaction of color and the atmosphere of a particular place.
Lindsey Warren grew up on Los Angeles before moving back east for undergraduate and graduate school. After stints in Boston and New York, she returned to Los Angeles. This push and pull between proximity and distances gives her a unique perspective on this city – that of an insider and outsider. She knows the city well but returned with new eyes to see it again.
Warren seeks to evoke the essence of the city through aesthetics that are difficult to communicate with words but are collectively felt by those who know it well. Notably, Warren takes very few liberties with the architecture as these are intended to be portraits of these places. The resulting unique compositions are simultaneously stylized and distinctively real.
Lindsey Warren (b. Los Angeles) received her BFA (2004) and MFA (2008) in Painting from Boston University, and a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from Brandeis University (Waltham, MA). Her work as been exhibited throughout the United States with recent shows in Los Angeles, New York City, and Laguna Beach. Lindsey has been a studio artist in Chashama’s Workspace Program in NYC and a participant in the Bronx Museum’s AIM program. Her public works and murals have been installed in Boston and New York City. She lives and works in Los Angeles.
