Contemporary image culture has changed the colors we expect the world to contain. The ‘Chromatic Landscapes’ series began with my encounter with California light. Cobalt shadows, intensely green hills, saturated flowers, and the sharp clarity of the landscape already seemed heightened. I reimagine this landscape within a contemporary visual culture shaped by Pop and post-Pop aesthetics, screens, filters, and digitally intensified imagery. The paintings move between iconic California landmarks and quiet residential streets, places often encountered through various media as well as in person. The paintings are built from discrete units of color: patches, strokes, and dots that remain visible up close and cohere at a distance. This language recalls Post-Impressionist techniques while reflecting a post-digital way of seeing. The individual brushstrokes are organized into ornamental rhythms. Rounded, single-color marks resembling elongated droplets or embroidery stitches repeat in lines, curves, and swirling bands across the surface. As the strokes change direction, they follow and reinterpret the forms and contours of the image, guiding the eye through the composition and giving the landscape a sense of movement. Saturated hues placed side by side intensify one another through simultaneous contrast, creating a chromatic vibration across the surface. Together, the strokes create an ornamental field inseparable from the image’s construction. Each mark contributes both color and direction. The paintings are reconstructions of perception rather than mere illustrations of beautiful scenery. The series asks: What does landscape look like when our visual expectations have been shaped by the intense imagery and saturated color of post-Pop and digital culture? The answer is a shift in what we have learned to recognize as natural. It is a recalibration of perception, not just an intensification of color. Color becomes the structure of the image, and painting offers a way to examine how contemporary visual culture shapes our experience of place.
