SOME LOS ANGELES SURF BREAKS

In 2020, I cracked my head open on a rock while surfing in LA. Quite suddenly, after more than a decade of portraiture, I found myself compelled to draw “reef breaks.” Could I use my drawing skills to find and study hidden boulders on the ocean floor to protect myself from being nearly paralyzed again? 

Thinking of Ed Rusha’s gas stations and swimming pools, I decided to navigate the tricky business of depicting notoriously localized surf breaks by removing their recognizable names.

I drew these surf breaks from life, in pigmented ink. My in situ sketches became meditative and expressive color field paintings once back in the studio. My lived experiences of these places as the only female inspired the color palettes for each non-naturalistic landscape painting.

I documented how the water interacts with the topography of the ocean floor by creating upwards of 50 ink and pastel color drawings on animation paper for every painting. Viewers can scan a computer chip in my painting to see the painting animate in their cell phone. In this way, these works became modern portraits of places––having identities both off- and online.