Trying to find inspiration in LA

I’ve extended my New York City series style of architectural and urban landscape paintings to Los Angeles.

A bit of personal history: As an established New Yorker (22 years), both in attitude and aesthetics, moving to Los Angeles has been a very difficult journey for me artistically. I’m neither Latino nor am I in the entertainment industry, so I have no personal, familial, or economic reason to be here other than to support my partner’s move here. So, with my own baggage and preconceptions, I found LA to be extremely hard to appreciate, in terms of the qualitative differences in lifestyle, which is layered with many unique challenges to merely exist with the same amount of happiness I once experienced living in NYC.

I know it’s a cliché that every New Yorker complains about Los Angeles, but there are truths behind the cliché. You have to drive everywhere. It’s too hot most of the year unless you’re by the ocean. It’s superficial. It’s a car town. It’s dirty. It’s economically segregated. There’s no sense of community. Everyone is weird. LA doesn’t have a personality, or it’s a facade that’s embedded in its hyper-inflated, entertainment-focused industry that makes it a one-trick pony. For instance, one of the biggest ‘sights’ is the Hollywood Sign, which is really just a billboard of letters against an otherwise beautiful hillside. Architecturally, and from a civic design perspective, LA doesn’t make any holistic sense. LA has the weather and beaches, which is true, but so do other cities along both east and west coasts, so that’s only useful if you’re a surfer, or a ‘part-time actor’ immersed in southern California beach culture. BTW, everyone is a part-time actor, or real estate agent. There are plenty of articles and books about the NY/LA topic, and most of them are true and polarized.

Los Angeles has its own unique history and wild west folksy aesthetic that has been hard for me to appreciate, even 5 years later. When I first arrived in Los Angeles, I thought it was an ugly spread of endless strip malls, fast food joints, and shanty buildings with no personality. I still think this is true, but now I’m trying to come to terms with reality vs my NYC expectations.

New York is truly a melting pot of styles, wealth, poverty, and functional and purposeful architecture that both celebrates its history and embraces the future, which adds to its enriched experience. In Los Angeles, the disparities of wealth are very segregated, so the charms of NYC can’t really exist here. There are extremely wealthy neighborhoods, securely tucked behind walls of Ficus bushes, Spanish stucco walls, and security cameras, and extremely poorer areas that haven’t been well maintained and that resemble some third-world economics. So painting these poorer areas feels more disassociated to me as a viewer. One can’t help but feel like an observer as opposed to a participant, and painting the wealthier areas seems equally disconnected and exclusive.

I’m not sure how long I’ll continue to paint Los Angeles. It hasn’t been inspiring. I’ll need to find something beautiful that’s not hidden behind security walls or made for tourists to see, and that will be difficult and will require energy and determination. We’ll see.

If you have any ideas on what are good subjects to paint in LA, click on my email or Instagram link and drop me a note!