Gay Summer Rick: Lighter Than Air

October 14 – November 4, 2023 (Tuesday – Saturday, 11:30 a.m. – 6 p.m.)
Reception: Saturday, October 14th, 4 – 7 p.m.
Artist Talk: Gay Summer Rick in Conversation with Shana Nys Dambrot, Saturday, October 21st, 4:00pm

The urban coastal environment continues to serve as muse for Gay Summer Rick’s paintings. For this new body of work the artist has delved into an exploration of awe and its ability to captivate and uplift us in troubling times. Floating, hovering, gliding, and flying, are pivotal themes explored in the work to elicit a sense of wonder. Graceful trapeze artists flying through the air, surfers at rest in the lull between waves, glowing reflections created by the setting sun just above the horizon, and objects, as though weightless, hovering overhead, invite the viewer to be transported.

Rick uses only palette knives to layer fine sheaths of colors to bring her visions to life. Through sensitively meditated control, she articulates delicate details and creates shimmering atmospheric scenes. In “Lustre”, from above we watch as surfers in the distance float on a calm fuchsia sea.. “Adagio” captures two trapeze artists sweeping through the air, holding each other’s arms in perfect harmony and control. Lighter Than Air provides a path to step away, experience a sense of lightness, peace, calm, quiet, or joy, and take the lift.

Gay Summer Rick’s primary preoccupation is the search for beauty and has found her spending years culling urban landscapes for hidden treasure. A longtime Los Angeles transplant from New York, Rick has used painting to reclaim home and her place in ever changing cityscapes. Rick’s work expresses quiet vibration and the surprising beauty of commonplace elements found in the urban environment. Her work describes this in an atmospheric and dreamlike yet familiar manner. Rick’s paintings are created using palette knives and layered veils of color, and they articulate the pulse of life where the city meets the sea, rendering her work as energetic as the tides that pull the ocean to and from the shore.