Rebecca Campbell

L.A. Louver is proud to announce an exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Rebecca Campbell that features a new series of portraits, all of woman artists.

Motivated by the lack of women’s representation in the art world, and in homage to the artists who inspire her, Campbell began her You are Here project in Fall 2015. The first 18 paintings from this series will be installed in L.A. Louver’s second floor gallery.

“I am not interested in making very realistic depictions; I do not sort people out by what they make; I just choose people who are serious, diligent, hard working, and good at what they do.”

–Rebecca Campbell

Campbell makes each painting with the same dimensions (30 x 22 1⁄2 in. [76.2 x 56.5 cm]), using paper that she primes with a custom pink acrylic paint. She then employs a limited palette of black, white, and gray to build the portrait. Although she approaches each work with identical parameters, Campbell imbues each portrait with a unique sense of identity, capturing their likeness with bold and gestural brushstrokes. Each sitter meets the gaze of the viewer, with her strengths and vulnerabilities candidly conveyed. Beyond subject matter, these works are a celebration of painting itself, and the quality of imagery that can only be brought forth with paint and brush. As Campbell states, “I believe deeply in process being content.”

The women painters, sculptors, writers and performers Campbell depicts include: Amy Adler, Sarah Awad, Linda Besemer, Heather Brown, Kyung Sun Cho, Patricia Fernandez, Alexandra Grant, Annie Lapin, Gwynn Murrill, Julie Orser, Susan Silton, Jennifer Steinkamp, Mpambo Wina and Eve Wood among others.

Rebecca Campbell was born and raised in Salt Lake City, the youngest of seven children in a strict Mormon family. Campbell earned her BFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art and her MFA from UCLA, graduating in 2001. In addition to California, Campbell’s paintings have been exhibited across the United States, from New York, Vermont and Florida, to Ohio, Utah, Colorado and Oregon, and overseas in Madrid, Spain, and Basel, Switzerland. In 2011, she was featured alongside Angela Ellsworth in the two-person exhibition A Peculiar People at the Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona.

Concurrent to the L.A. Louver exhibition, Campbell’s work may be seen in Dreams of Another Time, a two-person exhibition with Samantha Fields, curated by Kristina Newhouse at the University Art Museum, California State University, Long Beach (30 January – 10 April 2016). A solo exhibition of Campbell’s work titled The Potato Eaters will be on view at the Lancaster Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, California (7 May – 24 July 2016) and travels to Brigham Young University Museum of Art, Provo, Utah (30 September 2016 – 18 February 2017).