Known for its annual Cityscape Show, Billis Williams Gallery in Los Angeles is excited to present its 14th edition, opening July 20. While landscape painting once reigned supreme, due in part to new discovery and exploration, “the concrete jungle has replaced the wilderness as the frontier where one tests their mettle,” says gallery partner, Tressa Williams. The 2024 Cityscape Show, titled L.A.ndscape,brings together 30 artists who have been asked to capture the “wilds of Los Angeles.”
Patricia Chidlaw, Container Train with Sixth Street Bridge, 32 x 42"
“The genre of landscape painting is deeply entrenched in the history of art in the United States; majestic mountains, wide vistas, rolling plains,” Williams adds. “…Now cities are the places people go to forge their own path, to find community, to start over, to create something new…The landscape so many of us live with now is an urban landscape. And yet, here in Los Angeles, city views are punctuated by natural ones. This sprawling city is bisected by hills too steep to build on and divided by concrete rivers, but it is united under one glorious and enormously vast sky.”
Kevin Yaun, Pacific Coast 33, oil on canvas, 40 x 30"
A perfect example is Kevin Yaun’s show piece Pacific Coast 33, where we see the artist’s obsession with the interplay of architecture and nature in Los Angeles, in contrast with his time spent in Laguna Beach. “Looking up at the steep hills there, with houses perched high up top, gave me constant ideas for compositions,” Yaun explains. “It’s denser in Los Angeles, but there’s so much variety and seemingly infinite streets through hills. Any time I come out here, I’m snapping photos of interesting buildings and the light reflected in their windows.”
Yaun continues to explain that the painting is part of an ongoing series where he looks at architecture from the point of view of a serial renter. “I’ve moved countless times as an adult either for work, school or just the experience of being in another country,” he says. “Owning a home seems more foreign to me than a foreign language. Even if I could stay in one place long enough, looking at what it takes to buy one seems impossibly distant for this first-time homebuyer, considering the current market.”
Anastasia Egeli, Contemplations, oil on linen canvas, 38 x 28"
Artist Anastasia Egeli shares that her experience with Los Angeles is mostly sensual. “I smell the honey suckle. I consume the light as it plays against the moment. I feel drawn to capture the aliveness of that moment. LA is lit up. She is a city of color and emotionally rich song,” Egeli says poetically. “I feel so connected to myself when I see the light cut across a wall, a building, a window, an alleyway.”
In the painting Contemplation,Egeli portrays how “LA exists as a place and as a dream through a bedroom and window view. I sat on that bed looking at the light filtering through the window. The shades are common. The ferry lights on the wooden fence are all very Venice Beach. I am in the space but I’m also using the color to dream,” she says “My experience of this simple moment is something magical. The colors animate the dream state of being fully in that divine moment. It’s a state we can be in all the time in LA. The culture here is based on song, the musicians who came here and decadently created art in the hills.”
Ana Medina, El Matador Beach, oil on panel, 40 x 30"
Take in more views of the City of Angels by visiting Billis Williams Gallery for L.A.ndscape, opening July 20 with a reception from 4 to 7 p.m. The show will hang through August 17. —
Billis Williams Gallery 2716 S. La Cienega Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90034 • (310) 838-3685 • www.billiswilliams.com
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