ARTalk

Painting 51 depicts the Warner Brothers Studios back lot located directly adjacent to the banks of the Los Angeles River. Visible in this painting are old vehicles, parked catering trucks, and the costume warehouse to the left in the distance.

In this area of the San Fernando Valley, the Los Angeles River appears particularly manufactured, sterile and artificial. How appropriate that Los Angeles, a city known for its entertainment industry of perfect bodies and wrinkle-free face lifts would have its namesake river artificially formed into characterless smooth-bottomed concrete ribbons.

Even so, in this maligned, mostly forgotten engineered state, the Los Angeles River still seems to show a distinctive beauty capturing LA’s silvery light, its sunshine, shadows and architecture. My purpose in painting this series is to showcase this hidden beauty and perhaps build support for the meaningful revitalization of this important urban resource.

If you are interested in this painting, you may like others that are available in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #65

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 14:30:03 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #65

Disney/ABC Studio Buildings

Burbank

Acrylic on Canvas 30” x 30” x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series 65 (2021)

Near the Disney / ABC studio buildings and the small local Buena Vista Park, Los Angeles River Painting 65 depicts a bucolic early-morning sunrise before the busy City of Angels awakens. Here the river maintains its shear vertical walls and solid concrete bottom. Several miles to the east, where the river begins a gradual turn south, the vertical concrete walls of the channel will give way to more accessible sloped walls and a natural sandy floor typical of the river in the Elysian Valley and Frogtown.

If you are interested in this painting, you may like others that are available in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #67

Tue, 28 Sep 2021 15:00:57 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #67

Moon Bather

Frogtown

Acrylic on Canvas 24” x 30” x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series 67 (2021)

On a trip to Frogtown in the spring of 2021 during the year of the second wave of Covid, I went to the river to gather materials to better depict this delightful community sandwiched between the Harbor Freeway to the west and the Los Angeles River to the east. Here people often meander along the banks of the river and into the riverbed where native Salix trees have grown to lean in the direction of annual winter hydrologic forces.

Los Angeles River 67 “Moon Bather” depicts a fictional character in a very real part of Los Angeles. Here a solitary moon bather basks in the reflected light of a full moon. Surreal light seen through the branches of a river willow reflect like diamonds on this quiet Frogtown river.

If you are interested in this painting, you may like others that are available in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #55

Mon, 27 Sep 2021 15:00:11 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #55

The Light Beneath II

Downtown Los Angeles

Acrylic on Canvas 30” x 30” x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series 55 (2021)

Just southeast of the downtown Los Angeles city center, Interstate 5 and 10 merge as they pass over the Los Angeles River. A large distribution warehouse casts its colorless shadow as the river disappears beneath endless overpasses.

If you are interested in this painting, you may like others that are available in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #64

Mon, 27 Sep 2021 15:00:11 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #64

Interstate 10 Overpass

Boyle Heights

Acrylic on Canvas 24” x 30” x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series 64 (2020)

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #43

Mon, 27 Sep 2021 13:00:03 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #43

Double Decker 7th Street Bridge

Downtown Los Angeles

Acrylic on Canvas 30” x 40” x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series 43 (2021)

According to Bridgehunter.com, the Seventh Street double decker bridge is not really a double decker bridge at all. “This bridge was built in two stages. In 1910 the lower grade was built at grade to allow trollies across the river, which was unlined and much lower than it is now due to the LA River being an open quarry for aggregate mining. In the mid-1920’s it was decided to raise the bridge above grade as the trolley traffic was 90 degrees to the freight [train] traffic going north and south. Rather than demolish the bridge, they simply built on top of the existing bridge. Despite appearances, it is not a true double-decked bridge, as the lower deck is not connected to either bank. All traffic goes on the top deck”.

Los Angeles River Painting 43 depicts five structures just southeast of downtown collectively crossing the river in the warm glow of early dusk: the Seventh Street Bridge, Interstate 10 overpass, Olympic Boulevard Bridge, Washington Boulevard Bridge, and a train trestle. Originally completed as a midday scene with skies of blue, the painting was reworked several weeks later after I viewed another local artist’s image of the same subject where upon newfound inspiration motivated me to modify Painting 43 to its current state with skies of gold and pink.

If you are interested in this painting, you may like others that are available in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #39

Sun, 26 Sep 2021 15:00:08 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #39

Alondra Boulevard Bridge

North Long Beach

Acrylic on Canvas 24” x 30” x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series 39 (2020)

Los Angeles River painting 39 shows a view of the Alondra Boulevard Bridge looking south from the Riverside Freeway. Most people typically see such views of the river in barely three-second glimpses as they speed by in their automobile, or if the traffic is stopped as is often the case, as they inch along slowly, staring at blinking break lights before them.

These brief perspectives make it nearly impossible to see and appreciate the river’s unique beauty and, as there are few public spaces from which to interact with it, most Angelinos believe the river is devoid of merit.

Painting 39 of the “Alondra Boulevard Bridge” facing south into the morning light, takes on a distinctly warm palate including gold, purple and cerulean blue reflecting the sky in shallow pools left behind by a brief spring rain. This portion of the river channel is wide and mostly barren of vegetation. As summer approaches and temperatures rise, even the reflecting pools will be gone leaving a mostly dry river bottom of concrete with what water remains confined to the center channel.

If you are interested in this painting, you may like others that are available in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #59

Sat, 25 Sep 2021 15:00:05 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #59

The Reed Wren

Long Beach

Acrylic on Canvas 18” x 24” x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series 59 (2021)

Los Angeles River Painting 62 “Electrical Towers near Compton Creek”, depicts the golden light of an early winter morning sunrise onto nearby Edison electrical towers located between the river and the Harbor Freeway. Tower reflections in shallow pools of water sparkle on the river bottom in light blue, pink, orange and yellow in this warm painting illustrate the Los Angeles River’s distinctive beauty.

If you are interested in this painting, you may like others that are available in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #61

Sat, 25 Sep 2021 15:00:05 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #61

Canoeists that Changed History

Long Beach

Acrylic on Canvas 18” x 24” x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series 61 (2021)

During the summer of 2008, the Los Angeles River entered a brief but very critical period in its life as an urban waterway. Unbeknownst to most Angelinos, the Los Angeles River was about to lose vital legal protections over much of its 51-mile course due to a critical ruling by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Fearful of the consequences of such a decision, a group of pioneering clean-water advocates including Heather Wylie and George Wolfe devised a strategy to counter these events by organizing and filming a group canoe trip all the way from the river’s source in the San Fernando Valley to its mouth in the Long Beach Harbor to prove that the river was indeed navigable and deserving of protection.

Threatened by helicopters and police demanding they abandon their canoes and vacate the river, their efforts changed the history of the Los Angeles River when it received permanent designation and protection as a navigable waterway under the Clean Water Act. The real life bravery of this daring group may be seen in two documentaries Rock the Boat (http://www.rocktheboatfilm.com/) and Heather and Goliath. (https://cultureunplugged.com/documentary/watch-online/play/7108/Heather-and-Goliath).

In Los Angeles River Painting 61 “Canoes that Changed History”, golden afternoon sunlight, in bold strokes of dusty orange and silvery yellow, silhouette two individuals navigating the Los Angeles River near its mouth in Long Beach. The Vincent Thomas Bridge and Port of Los Angeles container cranes rise above the horizon in the distance, typical of infrastructure along the shores of endangered urban waterways throughout the world.

If you are interested in this painting, you may like others that are available in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #63

Fri, 24 Sep 2021 15:00:06 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #63

A Covid Bike Ride

Hollydale

Acrylic on Canvas 48” x 60” x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series 63 (2021)

The 105 Freeway cuts through the city of Paramount just south of the city of Hollydale. Here, in close proximity of warehouses and factories, the Los Angeles River bike path dips below the massive infrastructure of freeway overpasses that seem to float overhead as though part of a contemporary sculptural art installation.

In Los Angeles River painting 63, “A Covid Bike Ride” diagonal polygons of light and curvilinear shadows pose together in a symphony of engineering wonder, a view that is below the freeway and rarely seen. Out of sight, this Composition in Concrete is hidden from view to all but a few wandering homeless and the ever-present cyclists on the Los Angeles River bike path.

If you are interested in this painting, you may like others that are available in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

ARTIST JOHN KOSTA GUEST HOSTING LA RIVER X

Tue, 21 Sep 2021 16:26:18 GMT

Event: LA River X

September 24 - October 1, 2021

goodisbetter.net/lariverx

Artist John Kosta will be guest hosting LA River X from September 24 to October 1, 2021. LA River X is a digital humanities project established in 2019 by Tilly Hinton to showcase the diversity of perspectives and stories about the Los Angeles River. Join the artist at goodisbetter.net/lariverx for a week of conversation, stories and images.

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #24

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 02:06:48 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #24

Auto Body Shop at 26th Street Bridge

Vernon

Acrylic on Canvas 30” x 30” x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series 24 (2020)

An employment powerhouse for its meager population of roughly 130 people, Vernon has numerous small businesses such as this scruffy auto body shop adjacent to the Los Angeles River at the 26th Street Bridge.
Rendered in de-saturated neutral colors, this palate contributes to the industrial feel of the painting completed on a hollow-core wooden door concordant with the subject’s industrial theme.

If you are interested in this painting, you may like others that are available in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #33

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 02:00:31 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #33

Soto Street Bridge with Los Angeles Skyline

Vernon

Acrylic on Canvas 30” x 30” x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series 33 (2020)

The Sotto Street Bridge originally built in 1928 in the highly industrialized city of Vernon is approximately two miles south and east of the downtown LA city center. Compared to the enormous city of Los Angeles, the city of Vernon is absolutely tiny. Where as Los Angeles occupies over 500 square miles and has a population of over four million, Vernon a mere five square miles and has an almost nonexistent population of roughly 130 people. The population is so small that some have accused city politicians of housing homeless people within the city limits in a bid to solicit precious votes. Yet for its small size and negligible population it packs a very powerful economic punch employing over 50,000 people in its numerous factories, food processing plants and other businesses.

Los Angeles River painting “Soto Street Bridge with Los Angeles Skyline” casts new light on this scruffy and highly industrialized part of the river where the concrete vertical walls, depicted in olive green and dark blue, begin their gradual shift to sloped concrete embankments and where a flat river bottom after a light winter rain reflects an industrialized city sunsets in hues of pink, orange, and purple.

If you are interested in this painting, you may like others that are available in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #60

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 01:18:39 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #60

Rio Hondo River Confluence

South Gate

Acrylic on Canvas 18” x 24” x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series 60 (2021)

The Rio Hondo is one of the larger tributaries to the Los Angeles River, its source being 16 miles to the northeast in the suburb of Irwindale. The name Rio Hondo means Deep River in Spanish; however, after the US Army Corps of Engineers channelized most local rivers and creaks in the 1940s, it seems difficult to imagine the “Deep River” ever being much more than a shallow trickle.

In 2020 Frank Gehry, the architect famous for his innovative free-form building designs such as the Disney Center in downtown Los Angels, released a proposed river revitalization project that would cover this river confluence in a huge concrete platform for an entertainment complex. Many criticized the project asking how revitalizing a river could possibly mean covering it in more concrete and buildings void of any meaningful restoration of natural river functions.

Painting 61 depicts this confluence of the Rio Hondo River and the Los Angeles River located approximately ¼ mile north of Hollydale Regional Park. In “Rio Hondo Confluence”, levy shadows and hazy morning light reflect blues, pink and Naples Yellow in shallow puddles after a light spring rain. Ever-present high-tension electrical towers along the riverbank march in tandem toward the San Gabriel Mountains, the source of the Rio Hondo. In the distance, a couple hikes the river bottoms, surveying light and the vast concrete canyons of the Engineered River.

If you are interested in this painting, you may like others that are available in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #62

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 01:04:04 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #62

Electrical Towers near Compton Creek

North Long Beach

Acrylic on Canvas 18” x 38” x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series 62 (2021)

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

NEW EXHIBIT: Los Angeles River Series at the Square I Gallery

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 00:52:55 GMT

Los Angeles River Series

John Kosta's Los Angeles River Series

Square I Gallery

October 2 - October 28, 2021

Selected paintings from artist John Kosta’s The Los Angeles River Series will be on display at the Square I Gallery, 110 Harvard Ave, Claremont, CA from October 2 through October 28.

Join us for the artist reception and opening, Saturday October 2 from 6:30pm to 9:00 pm. Gallery hours are 10am-1pm and 3pm-6pm, closed Sunday/Mondays.

Los Angeles River Series #63 (2021 )

Los Angeles River Series #61 (2021)

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #24

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 00:23:36 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #24

Auto Body Shop at 26th Street Bridge

Vernon

Acrylic on Canvas 30” x 30” x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series #24 (2020)

An employment powerhouse for its meager population of roughly 130 people, Vernon has numerous small businesses such as this scruffy auto body shop adjacent to the Los Angeles River at the 26th Street Bridge. Rendered in de-saturated neutral colors, this palate contributes to the industrial feel of the painting completed on a hollow-core wooden door concordant with the subject’s industrial theme..

If you are interested in this painting, you may like others that are available in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #33

Sun, 19 Sep 2021 23:45:56 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #33

Sotto Street Bridge

Vernon

Acrylic on Canvas 30” x 30” x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series #32 (2021)

Los Angeles River painting “Soto Street Bridge with Los Angeles Skyline” casts new light on this scruffy and highly industrialized part of the river where the concrete vertical walls, depicted in olive green and dark blue, begin their gradual shift to sloped concrete embankments and where a flat river bottom after a light winter rain reflects an industrialized city sunsets in hues of pink, orange, and purple.

If you are interested in this painting, you may like others that are available in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #32

Fri, 16 Jul 2021 15:00:03 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #32

Eucalyptus at Radmore Avenue Bridge

Studio City

Acrylic on Canvas 24” x 30” x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series #32 (2021)

A new painting in the Los Angeles River Series.

If you are interested in this painting, you may like others that are available in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #31

Fri, 02 Jul 2021 16:00:03 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #31

26th Street Bridge

Industrial area in Vernon

Oil on Panel 11”x 11” x 1.5” ”

Los Angeles River Series #31 (2021)

SOLD

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #30

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 17:00:02 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #30

Five Bridges

City Center

Oil on Panel 11”x 11” x 1.5” ”

Los Angeles River Series #30 (2021)

SOLD

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #28

Fri, 21 May 2021 13:45:02 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #28

NBC Buildings

Studio City

Oil on Canvas 24”x 30”x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series #28 (2020)

Who owns the Los Angeles River? Surprisingly, besides the city of Los Angeles, no less than 181 other individuals and businesses own pieces of the channelized waterway ranging in size from tiny slivers of land along its edges to acres of land from bank to bank. The numerous owners include several movie studios including NBC that owns and occupies office buildings adjoining the river.

In Los Angeles River Painting number 28, NBC Studio Buildings, trees and vegetation cast bold high-contrast diagonal and vertical shapes of purple, blues, and blacks across a narrow ribbon of cool-blue channelized water. Sunlit studio buildings and the shear walls of the river reflect bold oranges and sienna hues. Electrical transmission poles, ever-present along the banks of the Los Angeles River, cast their linear shadows onto nearby office buildings only feet away. Several cars squeak by on a private access right of way with only a chain link fence separating them from the vertical drop to the river bottom below.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #26

Fri, 07 May 2021 13:30:02 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #26

Disney/ABC Studio Buildings

Burbank

Acrylic on Canvas 24”x 30”x 1.5” SOLD

Los Angeles River Series #26 (2020)

Near the Disney / ABC studio buildings and the small local Buena Vista Park, Los Angeles River Painting 26 depicts a bucolic early-morning sunrise before the busy City of Angels awakens. Here the river still maintains its shear vertical walls and solid concrete bottom. Several miles to the east, where the river begins a gradual turn south, the vertical sides will give way to more accessible sloped walls and a natural sandy floor. .

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #25

Fri, 23 Apr 2021 13:30:02 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #25

Arroyo Calabassas Drainage Channel

Bouganvilla and Shoup Street Bridge

Acrylic on Canvas 24”x 30”x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series #25 (2020)

Within the San Fernando Valley, most local residents would call the Arroyo Calabassas Creek a drainage channel, even though it is actually the most western headwater tributary of the Los Angeles River. As is currently the case with most Los Angeles River tributaries, the Arroyo Calabassas Creek has limited public access, blocked by chain link fences and no trespassing signs. Passing through numerous neighborhoods and suburban developments, the creek is an ideal place for adjoining bike paths and walking trails. The political will to increase access to the river and its tributaries seems to be growing with the development of The Upper Los Angles River Tributaries Plan (ULART) which envisions connecting almost 1,000 miles of trails and greenways along the river to provide direct walkable access to over 1.5 million Angelinos.

This 25th painting in the Los Angeles River series depicts the Shoup Street Bridge located approximately 1/4 mile west of where the Los Angeles River begins in Canoga Park. Neighborhood irrigation and street runoff provide a steady supply of moisture enabling the growth of channel-moss and algae. A nearby tree casts a large diagonal shadow of blue, dark green and gray reflecting the silvery cerulean blue light of a typical Southern California day. Catching bits of sunlight, the magenta flowers of a tropical Bouganvilla vine poke through a chain link fence. They are nature’s minions, fingers of life and color invading the boundary of man’s Engineered River.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #23

Fri, 09 Apr 2021 21:15:01 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #23

Confluence and Source

Canoga Park

Acrylic on Canvas 24”x 30”x 1.5” SOLD

Los Angeles River Series #22 (2021)

The Los Angeles River begins not in some shady canyon spring in the Santa Monica, Santa Susana or San Gabriel Mountains; rather its humble birth is near a San Fernando Valley strip mall in the suburb of Canoga Park, 1,000 feet north of the Westfield Mall Costco. Here amid parking lots and housing tracts, the concrete walls of the Arroyo Calabassas Creek and the Bell Creek channels merge and the Los Angeles River commences its 51-mile trek to the Pacific Ocean in Long Beach.

Los Angeles River Painting 23 The Source depicts this unassuming beginning. Instead of a scenic background of mountains, there stands a local high school constructed of concrete -- just like the river’s channel. And instead of reflections of pine and oak trees, one sees reflections of palm trees, chain link fences, and a sandy concrete bottom with maintenance vehicle tire marks of pink, red and gold. This is the image of a suburban birth. This is a suburban river.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #29

Fri, 09 Apr 2021 14:15:48 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #29

Vineland Avenue Overpass

San Fernando Valley

Oil on Canvas 24”x 30”x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series #29 (2020)

Less than a mile from the hustle and bustle of the touristic theme park Universal Studios and the chic shops of the Silver Triangle lies the Vineland Avenue Los Angeles River overpass. Unremarkable by any definition, the Vineland Avenue Bridge over the Los Angeles River is unlikely to be identifiable or remembered by anyone. Indeed, most people who traverse the span would never know they were on a bridge crossing a vital river that 150 years prior made life possible in the city of Los Angeles.

In Painting 29 Vineland Avenue Overpass, concrete, walls, roads and a submerged Los Angeles River are portrayed in warm tones of olive-sage, ochre, yellow and brown, their oblique angles and acute shapes divide the canvas into distinct and separate muted forms as definitively does the City of Angel’s sprawl and highways divide communities into separate suburbs. Oddly though, something ties the composition together. What is it? It is the color. Each has a bit of the other in its blood, like generations of a people, most from somewhere else, the colors forming intermingled relationships that bind together the whole even as some shapes, colors and people seem resolute in maintaining separation.

Like the colors we see in this painting, people’s lives and the collective actions of society are inextricably linked. In this canvas we call Earth, our rivers, our relationships, both urban and distant, abused and healed, ultimately are the source of the water we drink and the communal food we consume for our souls. It is the color in our lives and relationships that bring us joy, sorrow, peace and meaning. Our life-blood and our futures are co-mingled. We and our brothers and sisters are a collective living composition. Some slow down enough to observe and become mindful of what they see, of what is. Some will act according to how their Universal Composer moves them. Others continue on their own trajectory driven by unseen forces. In ways small and large whatever the outcome, it will be shared by all along the Los Angeles River.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

The San Fernando Valley

Fri, 09 Apr 2021 12:33:32 GMT

“If you cant bring the water to LA, take LA to the water.”

Located twenty miles north of downtown Los Angeles is the San Fernando Valley. It is here that the Los Angeles River begins its journey to the ocean. In the early 1920s this was nothing but a sleepy agricultural area, home primarily to ranchers and farmers. By the early 1930’s it became a primary battlefield in the California Water Wars.

As the city of Los Angeles continued to grow rapidly, demands on the Los Angeles River as the principal source of water for the city exceeded the ability of the ephemeral river to meet the expanding needs of the community. Seeking a more stable source of water, Los Angeles city water planners looked further north to the Owens Valley and the eastern Sierra Mountains.

In order to bring the Owens Valley water within the city limits of Los Angeles, city water planners needed to find a way to get the Owens Valley water past the land owners, ranchers and farmers that made up the sleepy San Fernando Valley.

Many believe that city of Los Angeles water planners, including William Mulholland who lead the Los Angeles Water department, cooperated with the local newspaper, The Los Angeles Times, to create an artificial drought driving up the cost of water forcing many San Fernando Valley ranchers and agriculture interests out of business. After several years, the plan worked and in 1923 the residents of the San Fernando Valley acquiesced and voted to agree to annexation by the city of Los Angeles as wealthy pro-development interests snatched up vast tracts of ranch land at depressed prices. Shortly after the region had been annexed by the city, the drought “miraculously ended” and the city of Los Angeles began to accelerate the approval of thousands of acres of housing tract subdivisions of what was formerly Valley farm land now owned by wealthy land developers.

These events became known as The Water Wars and in 1974 were portrayed in the Hollywood blockbuster film Chinatown where conspirators, proxy buyers, secret land acquisitions, murder and the dynamiting of the new Owens Valley Aqueduct by vigilante ranchers coalesced into a real life drama perhaps best summed up in the movie where a leading character states “If you cant bring the water to LA, take LA to the water”.

If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #22

Fri, 12 Mar 2021 17:06:50 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #22

Golden Light on 4th Street Bridge

Downtown Los Angeles

Acrylic on Canvas 24”x 30”x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series #22 (2021)

A new painting in the Los Angeles River Series, one of the few works that includes the artist.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #21

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 21:12:18 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #21

The Light Beneath

Downtown Los Angeles

Acrylic on Canvas 24”x 30”x 1.5” SOLD

Los Angeles River Series #21 (2020)

The journey continues with another painting in the Los Angeles River Series.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #20

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 20:59:35 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #20

Red Tracks

Downtown Los Angeles

Acrylic on Canvas 24”x 30”x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series #20 (2021)

A new painting in the Los Angeles River Series.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #19

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 20:44:43 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #19

Room With a View

Downtown Los Angeles

Acrylic on Canvas 24”x 30”x 1.5”

Los Angeles River Series #19 (2021)

The North Broadway and Spring Street bridges cross the Los Angeles River approximately one-mile northeast of City Hall in a working-class neighborhood of warehouses and industrial buildings. Here, there are few houses and residents except for the sporadic homeless encampment.

Directly to the west of this scene is the Los Angeles State Historic Park, a brand new 32-acre recreational area. This area is the nexus for possible future large-scale economic redevelopment along the banks of the Los Angeles River, potentially including high-density housing (with distant panoramas of the city center), shops, office buildings and public spaces.

Los Angeles River Painting 19, Room With a View, depicts the current appearance of this scrappy landscape prior to gentrification. The Broadway and Spring Street bridges, concrete engineering wonders from the 1930’s, accompany rusted chain-link fences, railroad tracks and electrical towers in tones of orange, blue, and purple to define the scene. A singular homeless individual has set up a tent beneath the bridge as his residence; the river and downtown skyscrapers his vista. His is a room with a view. By many standards some might abhor this highly industrialized scene; but it is quiet, peaceful, and in a uniquely Los Angeles way, immensely beautiful.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

Frank Gehry's bold plan to upgrade the L.A. River seeks to atone for past injustices

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 20:30:25 GMT

Note by John Kosta: After years of documenting the undiscovered beauty that lay in the once abandoned Los Angeles River, it is wonderful that awareness of this important waterway is gaining well deserved attention. Gehry's unique creative perspective and commitment to themes of social justice is a welcomed addition to the work being don e . Although Gehry’s participation is helpful in bringing awareness to the revitalization project, it will be useful to consider, as the project develops, how the participation of a world-renown architect may impact issues of affordability for residents in the area — a key cornerstone of the dialogue taking place with the Los Angeles River Revitalization Project .

The Los Angeles River Series art project is a large-scale multi-year initiative by California fine artist John Kosta. The series documents the artist's impressions about the river in an effort to call attention to its beauty as it is, as well as what might be, as envisioned by the Los Angeles River Revitalization Project. To learn more about the series and the revitalization project, see below .

In the decades since engineers first blanketed the Los Angeles River with concrete, working-class communities along its armored banks have struggled with blight, poverty and crowding — unintended consequences perhaps of an epic bid to control Mother Nature.

Now, as many of these neighborhoods suffer disproportionately higher rates of infection from COVID-19 — and as the nation seeks to atone for racial and institutional injustices laid bare in the police killing of George Floyd — famed architect Frank Gehry has unveiled a bold plan to transform the river into more than just a concrete flood channel and establish it as an unprecedented system of open space.

For more than half a century, Gehry has been better known for sketching ideas that became flashy cultural and commercial landmarks, such as the dazzling Walt Disney Concert Hall, whose tilting forms have reinforced Los Angeles' place among the world’s great urban centers.

Today, the 91-year-old has emerged as a lead architect in far-reaching proposals designed to uplift the profiles of Southern California’s poorest, most densely crowded communities along the backbone of the county's flood-control system.

Critics, including some influential environmental groups, would prefer to see naturalization of the river itself. But during a recent Zoom call from his Los Angeles studio, a grin crossed the Pritzker Prize winner’s face as he shared his plans to transform the forlorn industrial confluence of the Los Angeles River and the Rio Hondo in South Gate into an urban cultural park like no other.

“We studied the river upside and down and found that less than 2% of the time it runs very fast and is very dangerous,” he said. “So, we thought if we can’t get rid of the concrete, maybe we can cover it.”

Picture “elevated platform parks” — massive, bridge-like green spaces that occupy government airspace high above the flood channel's musty floor, and four feet above the rim of the channel walls. Constructed on hulking concrete planks and enormous girders, the earthen parks would stretch nearly a mile over both rivers and support a lush landscape of trees, grass, scenic ponds, horse trails and walking paths.

Nearby, children from throughout the region would mill around the courtyard of a $150-million cultural center, taking lunch and sharing what they learned there about music, dance, painting, culinary arts, ceramics, photography and filmmaking.

The platform parks are big-ticket projects that could take a decade or more to build. But the cultural center, which has the support of influential state, county and local lawmakers — and would be just a stone’s throw from a proposed Metro transit hub — could be realized much sooner.

“I’m excited about the cultural center and want to see it built,” Gehry said. “I think it will grow into something very special because it is so important to future generations. The life expectancy of kids south of downtown is 10 years shorter than it is elsewhere.”

His ideas arose from research and meetings with community leaders in such riverfront towns as South Gate, Downey, Maywood and Paramount — communities where a dearth of open space and other urban woes long ago tarnished their ZIP Codes.

It may sound like an idealist’s dream, but it builds on potential improvements and water management policies floated in Los Angeles County Public Works’ new 2020 master plan for the Los Angeles River along its entirety, from Chatsworth to Long Beach.

The updated document’s recommendations for the next 25 years take their cues from increased occurrences of extreme weather events due to climate change. But another goal is a reckoning with a legacy of flood control that “subjected riverfront neighborhoods to overt discrimination along racial and ethnic lines.”

Areas off the river’s east bank near downtown L.A., for example, were described by home lenders as being honeycombed with "diverse and subversive racial elements,” according to the river master plan.

“This classification established major barriers for residents seeking home loans and stalled their upward economic mobility,” it says. “Neighborhoods bypassed by this grading exercise tended to have more affluent and homogenous populations and were, by contrast, set up as white suburbs.”

Redlining, it says, produced landscapes of se gregation that both created and reinforced racial and ethnic enclaves along the river: Chinatown, Bronzeville and Sonoratown. The legacy endures, it says, "particularly in the San Fernando Valley and south of downtown, where some Latino and Asian communities today are disproportionately challenged by deteriorating social, economic and environmental conditions.”

More recently, construction of the freeway system during the 1950s and ’60s displaced nearly 250,000 people. Today, the 710 Freeway, which runs adjacent to the lower L.A. River, contributes to the poor air quality and heightened disease rates of nearby neighborhoods.

“Revitalizing the river south of downtown offers our southeast communities an opportunity to rebuild our connections, to the river and each other,” said Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood), whose 63rd Assembly District includes South Gate, Bell and Long Beach.

“Southeast L.A. deserves parks and trails, education and cultural centers,” he added. “Equity comes when every community has access to the tools to make life better.”

The partners in Gehry's firm who have been overseeing research on the river and preliminary project designs — alongside prominent landscape architect Laurie Olin, whose projects include the Getty Center in Los Angeles, and Mark Hanna, a water resources engineer at Geosyntec Consultants — say they aren't ready to unveil any formal proposals.

Whether their plans become reality hinges on their ability to compromise.

The river master plan has no legal jurisdiction over land use, and no authority to implement its recommendations. Ultimate decisions about what happens along the lower river corridor will be made by the county and the 14 cities that border it, many of them impoverished, working-class enclaves where local politics is often a clamor of conflict and scandal.

Still, Carolina Hernandez, principal engineer for countypublic works, is optimistic. “I can see the platform parks happening within 10 years,” she said. “But it will depend on local decisions and availability of funding because they will cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

”Denise Diaz, 34, a South Gate city councilwoman and lifelong resident of the area, hopes to see the cultural center open in 2024. “A significant project like this,” she said, “could help transform our long-overlooked landscape into a prime location shared by thriving, walkable and healthy communities.”

Paul Adams, South Gate parks director, however, urged patience. “It is exciting to see the lower river communities finally getting the attention they deserve,” he said. “But at this early phase of the process, everyone needs to take a few grains of salt along with it.

“Even projects designed by architects of this stature tend to shrink fast,” he added, “in the face of the cold-hearted reality of political and budget considerations.

”Whether the area in the vicinity of the confluence can survive as it is today — a gateway for new arrivals and a sea of low-rise industrial and commercial districts where 72% of all businesses are minority owned — is an open question in the minds of some community leaders. They fear that Gehry’s high-profile amenities will attract upscale developers, leading to displacement of thousands of people who now call it home.

Housing affordability is a key goal of the river master plan embraced by L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis, whose district includes struggling communities in the southeastern part of the county. For decades, these areas have been plagued by environmental affronts, including insensitive land use and pollution from freeways, railyards and industrial sites laden with toxic substances.

“ The gatekeepers of these proposals will be the people who live among them,” she said. “We must make sure that they are culturally sensitive to the area, set aside land for senior citizens and keep housing stock affordable.

There are signs that gentrification is already underway. In Maywood, which with 30,000 residents crowded into 1.13 square miles is the most densely populated city in California, typical home values surged about 10% over the last year to roughly $482,000, according to Zillow Real Estate Research. Zillow predicts they will rise more than 10% in the next year.

Community-based nonprofits, whose revenues shrank but whose expenses remained during the COVID-19 pandemic, are asking stakeholders to step up their support.

“Nonprofits play a huge role in sewing the fabric of a community,” said Miguel Luna, who serves on both the Statewide Watershed Partnership Program and the city of L.A.’s Pedestrian Advisory Committee. “We have to ensure that they have the ability to continue to do so in a robust and fair way — as opposed to cities and developers.

”Taking a less welcoming position, some environmentalists say that installing platform parks is about the worst thing you can do to the river and adjacent communities. Ever since Gehry listed them among the ambitious projects he wants to design in the autumn of his career, anger and fear have simmered.

A coalition of environmental groups led by Friends of the Los Angeles River, Heal the Bay, the Nature Conservancy, Los Angeles Waterkeeper, the Trust for Public Land and East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice threatened in November to withhold support for the river master plan if any mention of such structures was not removed before its publication.

“This proposal stands to do particular ecological harm,” the group argued in a letter to county officials, “create real estate speculation, and precludes future opportunities for climate resilience."

“More concrete,” it added, “does not help any of these issues or support the goals and methods described in the plan.” (...)

This article originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times on Monday, January 11, 2021 (Louis Sahagún). View the complete original article .

John Kosta's Los Angeles River series

Sotto Street Bridge and Nature Reclaiming are two of the nearly 100 fine art paintings from Kosta's Los Angeles River Series project. To Learn more about Kosta's journey documenting the changes taking place with the Los Angeles River visit the Los Angeles River Series .

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #18

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 02:03:02 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #18

The Morning Shift

Cesar Chavez Bridge

Oil on Canvas 24”x 30”x1.5”

Los Angeles River Series #18 (2019)

The Cesar Chavez Bridge connects Boyle Heights, a largely Hispanic borough to the east of the Los Angeles River, to the city’s western population centers including downtown and the nearby Metro transit center. Immediately west of the Metro center is a picturesque if not somewhat touristic pedestrian area called Alvera Street. This is one of the original settlements in the city and the location of one of Los Angeles’ original homes “Alvila Adobe” built in 1818. A number of historical buildings and shops continue to be run by decedents of the original vendors. Signs of the Mexican American and Spanish heritage of California are everywhere, from the city’s namesake river to the Cesar Chavez Bridge named after the famed civil rights and union-organizing activist.

Completed in 1926 and renamed the Cesar Chavez Bridge in 1995, the bridge is located along the original “Camino Real”, the 600-mile route that connected twenty-one historic missions founded by Father Junipero Serra as financed by the Spanish monarchy. The Spanish Revival style of architecture including the arches and the four ornate porticos marking its entrance, honor Father Junipero Serra and the Spanish explorers and settlers that colonized California and built the historic missions (though built largely by exploiting the labor of the native people of California, the Tongva).

Los Angeles River Painting 18, The Morning Shift, tells this California story. A solitary Mexican-American immigrant walks across the Cesar Chavez Bridge in the early sunrise light to catch a bus to her morning shift. She walks slowly but with confidence. Sunlight shines on her face. In her path stands the ornate Spanish Revival portico, its golden-lit spiral columns, articulated cornice and embellished capitals, all symbols of wealth and power. Behind the portico lay the dry banks of the Los Angeles River and a menacing sky. California has long been a state of contrasts: wealth, poverty, hope, and with housing unaffordability and income inequality among the highest in the nation it remains so today.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #17

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 01:46:31 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #17

Gray Day with Red Buildings

North Main Street Bridge

Oil on Canvas 24”x 30”x1.5”

Los Angeles River Series #17 (2019)

The North Main Street Bridge was built in 1910 at a time when the city of Los Angeles was growing rapidly and a number of new bridge construction projects were taking place. It is historically significant as it is the first open-spandrel three-hinge concrete arch bridge to be built in the western United States, a design that was considered absolutely pioneering at the time.

Los Angeles River Painting 17 depicts this innovation in a symphony of grays and whites. The scene is absent hard-lined shadows and clear blue skies typifying a “June-gloom” day familiar to most Angelinos. Soft diagonal shapes of subtle warm tans and muted pinks form the hardened river’s concrete embankments. The Main Street Bridge stands steadfast and firm: Once an engineering miracle, now it seems small and forgotten. The river below meanders and pools reflecting flows of cool-white and deep black. The Bridge and the River dance a weary waltz: He is the once-great and handsome engineering marvel and she his delicate partner, once lithe and untamed now stiff and restrained. He has been lost to age and changing tastes. She has been lost to his engineering. Their fate, however, is inextricably linked: What will it be?

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #16

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 01:37:39 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #16

Imagine

Fourth Street Bridge

Oil on Canvas 24”x 30”x1.5”

Los Angeles River Series #16 (2019)

Fine art museums around the world contain treasures informing the history and development of humankind, creations that never cease to provide inspiration and awe. This is equally true for painters and other artists whose careers are often subtly and sometimes strongly influenced by seeing the works of others. While identifying the specifics of such influence and shifts may be best left to art historians, it is possible to compare similarities and differences in an artist’s work to that of influential predecessors.

In this 16th painting of the Los Angeles River Series, Imagine, two very different works of art from the past seem to have been merged into one: The partial face of a character appears in the lower left corner is perhaps inspired by the World War II graffiti meme ‘Kilroy”, whose comical head and nose is shown peering over a wall usually along with the narrative ‘Kilroy was here’. Its origins are uncertain, but the Kilroy image was ubiquitous during the 1930’s and 1940’s. During the Second World War the meme was frequently found scrawled as graffiti perhaps by US marines and it was even rumored to have been found at the Kremlin on a VIP bathroom stall whereupon Stalin asked an advisor “Who is this Kilroy and what is his purpose for being here?”

‘The Fighting Temeraire’ is the second inspiration in Imagine. At the time it was painted in 1839 by the English artist William Turner, long before the Impressionist movement, it was groundbreaking and the source of much controversy and scorn. When paintings were expected to conform to traditional realistic compositions of idealized scenes, and critics at the British Royal Academy could make or break an artist’s career, Turner’s ‘The Fighting Temeraire’ with its abstract shapes of vivid colors, atmospheric hazy dreamlike effects and its relative lack of detail, turned the art world on its head. English art critics were actively debating the meaning of art: What was art if it does not accurately depict reality?

In the Los Angeles River painting ‘Imagine’, both a Kilroy stand-in and the vivid colors and abstract shapes of an atmospheric sky in ‘The Fighting Temeraire’ seem to be combined into a single painting along with electrical lines, bridges, roads, riverbanks, warehouses, and cloud formations. Everything explodes forth from a peculiar character’s head as do the end of the Fourth Street Bridge and the vanishing point of a channelized Los Angeles River void of vegetation and life. The painting’s elements seem to shout “Look at us...we are one. Imagine with me. Together let us build a new future.”

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #15

Wed, 23 Dec 2020 22:42:43 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #15

The 26th Street Bridge in Orange

Maywood

Oil on Canvas 24”x 30”x1.5”

Los Angeles River Series #15 (2019)

Views of the downtown city skyline are generally not visible from most areas of the Los Angles basin because industrial buildings and general development blocks one’s line of sight. This is true in the Maywood area as it is elsewhere. However, looking north toward the Los Angeles skyline from nearby bridges and overpasses is a different story. The wide girth of the Los Angeles River channel prevents development along its path, opening sight lines. Standing on these river crossings, looking north along the path of the river during the golden hours of sunrise and sunset or after winter rains when clouds paint the sky, yields among the most beautiful river and city skyline vistas anywhere in the Los Angeles basin.

The15th painting of the Los Angeles River series shows one such view. Late afternoon hazy sunlight casts a golden aura across sky, river, and distant buildings. The river’s hallmark electrical towers and overhead power lines slice the vista into curvilinear forms. When pieced together, the scene looks like a giant assembled puzzle that is broadcast across a vast horizon for millions to see. Some will pause and look up at this day’s last gift, a painted puzzle in the sky.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #14

Wed, 23 Dec 2020 22:17:01 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #14

Nature Reclaiming

Griffith Park, Los Angeles

Oil on Canvas 36" x 36” x 1.5"

Los Angeles River Series #14 (2019)

South of Burbank and north of Griffith Park, near where the Los Angeles River takes a sharp turn from east-west to north-south, the river’s subterranean geology and rock formations force underground water into above-ground springs. Here the river’s concrete bottom terminates, replaced by sandy gravel forming habitat for several native desert willows giving life to a mostly dry riverbed.

In Los Angeles River Painting #14 ‘Nature Reclaiming,’ a lone Arroyo Willow stands sentinel in a soft bottom area of the river; It is a courageous soldier of nature attempting to retake a river that has been extensively over-engineered. It is fall and cool weather has returned. Winter rains bring storm water and life back to a parched environment. The autumn leaves of this California native Salix tree turn gold in a region not known for fall color. Later in the season, heavier rain and runoff from an impervious city will urgently find its way into the riverbed and inundate the channel. Briefly, from bank-to-bank, a raging torrent covers most of the willow, leaving only its upper branches visible. In mere hours, more quiet flows will return and the Forgotten River will once again return to its sedated self.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #13

Wed, 23 Dec 2020 07:38:02 GMT

Los Angeles River Series #13

Monuments to an Engineered Rivers

Downtown Los Angeles

Oil on Canvas 48" x 36” x 1.5"

Los Angeles River Series #13 (2019)

The Los Angeles River near the downtown city center is vast and broad. In this area, barricades, chain link fences and railroad yards limit public access. Entry to the river (for scofflaws) still can happen via climbing through fence holes and scrambling down a five-foot concrete wall. Passage is definitely not ADA compliant and, for safety reasons, best considered in the bright light of daytime during the dry season when river flows are minimal.

The reward for such an excursion is entry into a brilliant world of whiteness and solitude where manmade materials and architectural elements prevail. One is alone in an engineered reality with little company except perhaps marsh birds and a few homeless. It is quiet, vast and peaceful. This would not be called beautiful by most standards, but for some reason it inspires awe and perhaps a bit of fear of the immense forces that this infrastructure was constructed to constrain.

Los Angeles River #13 depicts such a scene. From near the Arts District, looking south into the sun, stand the columns, arches and substructures of the Fourth Street and Seventh Street Bridges, the Santa Monica Freeway and several train trestles: These huge monuments of concrete elevate speeding cars, trains and passers-by unaware of the scene below.

I first completed and posted this painting to social media on January 12, 2019. Shortly thereafter my daughter Chelsea Kosta, also a fine artist, suggested improvements that I took to heart and incorporated into the painting which was reposted on January 16. While not obvious to me when I made these finishing touches, I was in fact becoming aware of some concepts of Tonalism as used by fine artists such as James Abbott Whistler and William Turner: Particularly in their later works, they used simplified composition and limited details and palate to convey emotion. It can take years to develop the knowledge and techniques to effectively use these principles, but a greater consciousness of their importance was being born within me. Los Angeles River #13 revealed the possibilities that this new style might bring to my paintings, and this approach was Tonalism.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #12

Sun, 06 Dec 2020 19:24:01 GMT

Los Angeles River #12

The Beauty of Haze and Power Lines

Downtown Los Angeles

Oil on Canvas 24" x 30” x 1.5"

Los Angeles River #12 (2018)

High-tension electrical towers are underappreciated. They are rarely depicted in art, though they maintain a ubiquitous presence in contemporary society. Their lacework of structural iron loom over untold fields in urban, suburban and rural settings and perhaps stand alone as one of the most important and underappreciated aspects of global infrastructure: They carry the energy that drives everything from cell phones to electric trains literally hundreds of thousands of miles across the globe.

The use of a lattice of engineered structural steel was first exploited to renowned effect by George Washington Ferris to build the monumental and first Ferris wheel for the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893. Not to be outdone by the Americans, Gustave Eiffel created what was, at that time, the world’s tallest structure for the Paris world’s fair in 1889. The beauty, strength and versatility of a lattice of structural steel fundamentally changed construction and architecture for decades into the future.

Sadly, this same technique when used for the contemporary high-tension electrical tower, does not seem garner the same level of aesthetic appreciation as it did when used to create its architectural ancestors. However, in Los Angeles River Painting 12, The Beauty of Haze and Power Lines, the humble high-tension electrical tower does get a bit of artistic recognition. Marching in tandem along the banks of the Los Angeles River, engineered steel structures pose with other elements of infrastructure; concrete bridges, a channelized riverbed and rows of railroad cars. In the background, the hills of Elysian Park and Montecito Heights can be seen through a typical Los Angeles silvery haze.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #11

Sun, 06 Dec 2020 01:33:53 GMT

Los Angeles River #11

Glendale Narrows

Atwater Village

Oil on Canvas 24" x 30” x 1.5"

Los Angeles River #11 (2018)

The Los Angeles River just south of Glendale is adjacent to a friendly old neighborhood known as Atwater Village. In years past the area was know for its somewhat ominous Frogtown Gang named after boisterous amphibians that occupied the river. But things have changed and while frogs remain, the gang problem seems to have largely gone into hibernation being replaced by a new generation, beer pubs, resident artists and mom and pop restaurants.

In Los Angeles River Painting 11, it is easy to see why the frogs have stuck around. Here the Los Angeles River has a sandy bottom and clear swift-moving spring water pools around granite boulders and native desert willows. Reflections of vegetation and the nearby hills of Griffith Park lend the feeling of some far away place. Bicyclists can often be seen riding on designated paths while solitary couples stroll the walking trails enjoying solitude.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #10

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 03:22:59 GMT

Los Angeles River #10

Two Towers

Downtown Los Angeles

Oil on Canvas 24" x 18” x 1.5"

Los Angeles River Series #10 (2019)

The Los Angeles River, near the downtown city center, is characterized by several ubiquitous visual attributes: Vast amounts of concrete, high-tension electrical towers and historical architecture. Los Angeles River Painting 10 includes all three.

Painting 10, ‘Two Towers’, depicts two very different towers: One of concrete and another of iron. Shades of burnt sienna, green and ochre define the cast concrete Spanish Baroque Cesar Chavez Bridge portico tower, while structural iron is the material of choice for the second tower, a high-tension electrical structure standing skeleton-white in the morning sun.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #9

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 03:17:01 GMT

Los Angeles River #9

Good Morning San Gabriels

Downtown Los Angeles

Oil on Canvas 24" x 30” x 1.5 "

Los Angeles River Series #9 (2019)

The San Gabriel, Santa Monica, and Santa Susana Mountains border the eastern boundary of the Los Angeles River watershed north of the city center. Many who visit southern California for the first time are surprised by the region’s mountains and hills. And while southern California generally earns its arid reputation, when winter rains arrive, they are sometimes torrential. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s the Los Angeles River flooded numerous times causing significant property damage: This spurred the US Army Corps of Engineers, with the support of the city of Los Angeles, to channelize the river all along its entire 51-mile length.

For those lucky enough to arrive in downtown Los Angeles from the eastern suburbs via early morning train, this bucolic view, as depicted in Los Angeles River Painting 9 showing the San Gabriel Mountains to the north, greets one moments before arriving at Union Station. Here the mountains meet city and the sun casts pink highlights along distant ridges of purple mountains. Concrete riverbanks and ever-present electrical towers identify the scene as distinctly Los Angeles.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #8

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 03:10:01 GMT

Los Angeles River #8

Sandy River Bottom

Los Feliz Boulevard Bridge

Oil on Canvas 24" x 30” X 1.5"

Los Angeles River Series #8 (2019)

Approximately two miles south of the city of Glendale and immediately east of the Griffith Park Railroad, the Los Feliz Boulevard Bridge crosses the Los Angeles River midpoint of a five-mile river section called the Glendale Narrows. Here the river retains its natural sandy bottom rather that being covered in concrete, as is most of the river along its 51-mile length. The US Army Corps of Engineers channelized the Los Angeles River in 1938 after numerous destructive floods. This more natural sandy bottom element, and the resulting wildlife and habitat that go along with it, was not the result of planning by the Corps to retain natural river elements, but rather due to latent geologic features: West of the hills of Griffith Park, the easternmost edge of Santa Monica Mountains contain shallow bedrock forcing groundwater from the San Fernando Valley to the surface. Here the Los Angeles River is enriched by springs bringing abundant river flows throughout the year. Apparently, in the Glendale Narrows at least, Mother Nature has prevailed setting an example of what might be possible as the city of Los Angeles attempts to set a path forward toward a more sustainable and ecologically sound future for the Los Angeles River.

In Los Angeles River Painting 8, Sandy Bottom Beneath Los Feliz Boulevard Bridge, cool blues and greens, abundant vegetation and shallow pools create habitat for waterfowl and aquatic life. The hills of Griffith Park rise to the left, evidence of the Santa Monica Mountains whose bedrock forces water to the surface making the Glendale Narrows section of the Los Angeles River an island of life rather than one of concrete. An ever-present high-tension electrical tower, painted bridge graffiti, concrete banks and sunny silver skies provide further proof that this river painting belongs to Los Angeles.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #7

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 03:04:03 GMT

Los Angeles River #7

Riverglen Apartments

Atwater Village

Oil on Canvas 24" x 30” X 1.5"

Los Angeles River Series #7 (2019)

South of Atwater Village are the Riverglen Apartments. Although the apartments appear to overlook the river, due to a foreshortening of the painted scene, these apartments are actually more distant. Several noisy highways and numerous obstacles make actual river access difficult-to-impossible.

In 2020, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy released a draft of ULART (the Upper Los Angeles River Tributaries Revitalization Plan) that aspires to improve river access and environmental functionality while maintaining important flood control features along the river. Hopefully one day there will be actually be housing along the banks of a revitalized Los Angeles River where both wildlife and residents can enjoy the river’s beauty.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #6

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 02:59:49 GMT

Los Angeles River #6

The Metro Buildin g

Downtown Los Angeles

Oil on Canvas 24" X 30" X 1.5"

Los Angeles River Series #6 (2019)

Adjacent to the Los Angeles River, the Metro Building is a familiar sight to those arriving in Los Angeles via train. In the foreground is the Fourth Street Bridge, its Beaux Arts concrete towers and Gothic Revival porticos and light posts are remnants to a bygone architectural era.

Los Angeles River Painting 6 depicts late morning when the bright sun of a cloudless day has bleached most color from the scene. Grays, silvers, blues and pinks prevail, making it a painting of muted tones and slender shadows.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #5

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 02:53:04 GMT

Los Angeles River #5

Below the Santa Monica Freeway

Olympic Boulevard Bridge

Oil on Canvas 24" x 30” x 1.5'

Los Angeles River Series 5 (2019)

Even when the Los Angeles River is mostly dry there remains a constant flow of effluence from upriver storm drains. This moisture enables vegetation to grow in the sand and shallow mud along the smooth concrete bottom…vegetation that gets washed clean by the next season’s rains.

Los Angeles River Painting 5 depicts the reflections of the Santa Monica Freeway overpass, the Olympic Boulevard Bridge and distant train trestles… the same trestles depicted in Los Angeles River 4, though at a much greater distance. Ever-present high-tension electrical towers march along the river’s edge like skeletons of giant alien beings.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #4

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 02:42:25 GMT

Los Angeles River #4

Blue Water and Geese

Below the 4th Street Bridge

Oil on Canvas 24" x 30” x 1.5"

Los Angeles River Series 4 (2019)

Shallow river waters often attract shore birds such as the two distant geese foraging in the mossy concrete-lined river bottom of Los Angeles River Painting 4. The Arts District, to the immediate west, bustles with new development and gentrification. Within the confines of the concrete banks of the river bottom silence and isolation prevail. The noise and hustle-bustle of the nearby city seems a world apart.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #3

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 00:50:37 GMT

Los Angeles River #3

Two Train Trestles

Near Washington Boulevard Bridge

Oil on Canvas 24" x 30” x 1.5"

Los Angeles River Series #3 (2019)

South of the downtown city center are numerous rail yards. Train trestles transverse the Los Angeles River no less than eight times in this section of the river southwest of the Fashion District.

Los Angeles River painting 3 depicts a view to the south from the Washington Boulevard Bridge. A complex jumble of dark rusted iron hangs over a river channel without vegetation. Recent winter rains have left shallow water across the flat concrete river bottom reflecting light blue, green and pink volumes contrasting with the weighty trestles above.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #2

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 00:40:45 GMT

Los Angeles River #2

Pink Horizon Downtown LA

Bandini Boulevard Bridge

Oil on Canvas 24" x 30” x 1.5"

Los Angeles River Series #2 (2019)

The Bandini Boulevard Bridge crosses the Los Angeles River in the city of Vernon, an industrial area that is home to one of the largest pork slaughterhouses in California. The beautiful sunsets and downtown skyline are a bucolic refrain from the industrial buildings and butchery stench. Nearby the landmark gargantuan if-not-creepy mural titled “Hog Heaven” depicts pigs with human-like features flying with wings and romping happily in heaven after their ordeal of being cut to pieces and processed into hot dogs for consumption all across America. Hog Heaven was painted by the artist Les Grimes who, in a sad twist of fate, died in a fall while painting the mural requiring the conscription of several other artists to finish the unusual work.

In the Los Angeles River painting 2 there are no flying pigs but rather cloudy skies, city skylines and the Soto Street Bridge as viewed to the north from the Bandini Boulevard Bridge. Winter rains have left enough runoff to attract shorebirds such as black-necked stilts and sandpipers. A pink horizon silhouettes a gray and rose skyline. Deep purple and peach clouds give way to cerulean blue skies. Ever-present high-tension electrical towers march in the distance.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #1

Sat, 24 Oct 2020 02:26:19 GMT

Los Angeles River #1

Boyle Heights Dusk

Fourth Street Bridge

Oil on Canvas 24" x 30” x 1.5"

Los Angeles River #1 (2018)

For over 100 years Boyle Heights has been a neighborhood that reflected the changing diversity of Los Angeles. In the early years of the city, it was home to Los Angeles’ largest Japanese community but also to many people of Jewish, Russian, Armenian and African-America decent. But by the year 2000 the Boyle Heights neighborhood was, according to the US Census, 94% Latino and only 2.3% Asian. With the addition of the Gold Line light rail in 2009 and numerous new developments, many long-time Hispanic Boyle Heights residents have begun to complain of gentrification and rising rents, a common refrain that will likely be repeated as downtown Los Angeles continues to evolve from an abandoned urban core to a trendy, desirable place to live.

Los Angeles River painting 1 depicts the view of the downtown city skyline from Boyle Heights. Ever present are the downtown memes of rail yards, high-tension electrical towers, historical bridges covered with graffiti sheltering uncounted homeless, and a barely-visible channelized river. A gloomy depiction of the underbelly of Los Angeles contrasts with a colorful pink and blue Southern California sunset as seen through electric power lines. This Los Angles River first-in-the-series painting suggests that light and dark, beauty and ugly, nature and the man-made coexist… even if one is often a silent, if not oppressed, partner.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #52

Wed, 09 Sep 2020 23:24:31 GMT

Los Angeles River #52

Nocturne Metro Building

Near City Hall

Oil on Canvas 24"x18”x1.5

La River Series: #52 (2019)

“Night is not something to endure until dawn. It is its own kingdom, it moves to its own laws and many living things dwell in it.” -- Patricia A. McKill

Adjacent to the Los Angeles River, four blocks north of city hall, the LA Metro Building is the headquarters for the Metropolitan Transit Authority. Abundantly lit at night, Metro building reflections can be seen in the river after winter rains have drained and puddles form that mirror the colors of the night. City lights cast departing storm clouds in pastels of olive green, pink and purple with towering high-tension structures marching into the distance like alien beings.

Capturing such moments for reference and then onto canvas in a compelling manner can be daunting; timing visits to the river for those moments when lighting and weather conditions are just right. Traffic, weather, time-of-day and seasons all affect the appearance of the river and viewing the same scene just hours apart creates an entirely different world.

In Los Angeles River # 52, Nocturne Metro Building, an evening at an urbanized river becomes an isolated place filled with unique beauty and its own inhabitants, both living and imaginary.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

LOS ANGELES RIVER SERIES #53

Wed, 09 Sep 2020 23:12:35 GMT

Los Angeles River #53

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One Santa Fe and the First Street Viaduct

insert size of painting here -- 30"x30”

La River Series: #53 (2019)

A new development titled One Santa Fe in the downtown LA Arts District commands a significant presence along the LA riverfront. Located across the street from the Cal-Arts School of Architecture, One Santa Fe is illuminated in the warm glow of dusk as depicted in painting number 53 from the vantage point across the river and beneath the First Street viaduct.

In this part of Los Angeles, expansive rail yards and Edison high-tension power line easements separate most development from the riverfront making public access all but impossible. The Los Angles River Revitalization project envisions the rail yards and easements to be replaced by parks and open space to increase public access to the river.

Many people fear that new development along a revitalized riverfront will cause gentrification with unaffordable housing making it a newly accessible river only for the rich while displacing nearby immigrant communities and homeless. The effects of gentrification on neighborhoods seem likely to be a continued subject of contention for future development along the river.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

An interactive map that highlights a number of the developments planned and occurring along the Los Angeles River.

Home of the Los Angles River Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the vital ecosystem along the river .

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: ANTONIO LOPEZ GARCIA

Sat, 01 Aug 2020 20:27:50 GMT

ANTONIO LOPEZ GARCIA

Spanish Painter & Sculptor

1936-Present

Antonio Lopez Garcia's art, and in particular such sculptures as Hombre y Mujeur, bedazzle the senses in his ability to capture life-like realism from wood and stone.

Antonio López García is a Spanish painter and sculptor known for his hyperrealistic style. Although he is not a prolific artist, his works have been recognized and revered by such important art critics as Robert Hughes who considered García a master realist.

García’s hyperrealism is especially apparent in works such as Hombre y Mujer (Man and Woman) where the sculptures’ eyes seem to be looking toward us as much as we are towards them. Their bodies are stripped bare and lifelike making us feel like we are witnessing something private and deeply human. All artifice has been removed, will we do the same?

Hombre y Mujer (1968)

Although García is an important artist within the Hyperrealist Movement the early part of his artistic journey was more strongly informed by Magic Realism as can be seen in La Aparición (The Apparition) . Although the same attention to detail is evident, García’s earlier work often focuses more on an 'interpretation of reality' rather than an exacting reflection.

La Aparición (1963)

During the mid-1960s he began to focus on realism noting that the physical world had gained more importance to him. Garcia’s hyperrealist work is often devoted to the mundane every-day life, depicting humble people, nature, buildings, and interiors. His artistic eye and attention to detail to these seemingly simple subjects encourage us to re-examine and re-consider the ‘ordinary’ in subtle and profound ways.

Given that García is not prolific there have been few solo exhibits of his work, including his first at the Ateneo de Madrid (1957) and three subsequent shows in New York, two during the 1960s and one in 1986. In 2008, he was featured at a solo exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and not long thereafter Madrid desde Torres Blancas ( View of Madrid from Torres Blancas ) sold at a Christie's auction in London for 1,918,000 Euros, the highest amount paid up to that time for a work by a living Spanish artist.

Madrid desde Torres Blancas (1974)

> City of Los Angeles River Revitalization Project Official Site ...

In 2019, García's work was part of the Painting and Sculpture Exhibit in NYC and his art is currently exhibited in several US museum collections. He is represented by The Marlborough Gallery .

If I learn of any upcoming exhibits or events that include Garcia's work, I will be sure to update ARTalk with the details.

More on Antonio López García ...

Antonio López García Paintings, Sculptures and Drawings 1965-1986 (1986)

Antonio López García

(2008)

Antonio López García: Paintings and Sculpture (2011)

LA RIVER SERIES #44

Tue, 05 May 2020 06:46:43 GMT

LA RIVER SERIES

Painting # 44

Silver morning over Rosecrans Avenue Bridge

30"x30”

La River Series: #44 (2019)

View in Gallery

Late spring early summer days in Los Angeles are often marked by overcast days and hazy silvery light. This painting depicts such a day over the Los Angeles River near Paramount looking south toward the Rosecrans Avenue bridge.

If you are interested in this painting, you can view more details in the Gallery and Store . If you would like to learn more about the City of Los Angeles' La River Project, explore the links below.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

> LA River Development Map ...

An interesting interactive map that allows you to explore the projects and see what is happening at the various sites.

LA RIVER SERIES #33

Tue, 05 May 2020 06:31:20 GMT

LA RIVER SERIES

Painting # 33

Sotto Street Bridge looking north

30"x30”

La River Series: #33 (2019)

View in Gallery

With a little rain and a setting sun, the LA River can show off its gritty urban beauty. Here is painting #33 of the LA River in the highly industrial Vernon area with a view of the Sotto Street Bridge looking north, LA skyline is in the distance.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

> City of Los Angeles River Revitalization Project Official Site ...

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

> LA River Development Map ...

An interesting interactive map that allows you to explore the projects and see what is happening at the various sites.

LA RIVER SERIES #32

Mon, 04 May 2020 22:45:18 GMT

LA RIVER SERIES

Painting # 32

Radford Avenue Bridge in Studio City

November 16, 2019

La River Series: #32 (2019)

View in Gallery

Compare this part of the LA river with my last painting in Vernon, entitled #31 , where the area is mostly industrial. Here in Studio City the LA river is bordered by television studio buildings and apartments while the river is still a concrete channel, but there is clearly an urban vibe. The river in both Vernon and Studio City possess a certain but distinct raw beauty for those able to take the time to appreciate it.

More on the Los Angeles Revitalization Project

> City of Los Angeles River Revitalization Project Official Site ...

The official website for this tremendous undertaking by the City of Los Angeles.

> LA River Development Map ...

An interesting interactive map that allows you to explore the projects and see what is happening at the various sites.

Relevant Link

Etc...

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: MALCOLM LIEPKE

Tue, 07 Apr 2020 05:50:51 GMT

MALCOLM T. LIEPKE

American Illustrator & Painter

1953-Present

Malcolm T. Liepke is a contemporary American painter known for his loose brush style, restrained color palette, and apt ability to capture universal human emotions in figurative artworks. To achieve the lush textures in his paintings, Liepke make use of the alla prima (Italian, meaning at first attempt) or ‘wet-on-wet’ technique where layers of paint are applied to previous layers of wet paint. This technique requires the artist to work more quickly so that subsequent layers are completed before initial layers are dried.

Backless Dress (2018), Legs Together (2019), Curves and Circles (2019), Black Sweater (2017)

Before turning his focus to fine art, Liepke worked as a commercial illustrator for clients such as Time, Newsweek, and Forbes. Regarding his prior profession, the artist has said that he left illustration because of the compromises that it required and —“There’s no great art by committee.” * This perspective, no doubt, was key in the development of Liepke’s distinct style.

Two Sides of Frustration (2018)

Although he attended the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena California, he dropped out after a year and a half and is primarily self-taught. An important period of this self-education was spent at the Prado in Madrid where the artist became influenced by the work of Diego Velázquez. Although Liepke’s art reflects an admiration for others such as Edgar Degas, John Singer Sargent, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, he has said that Velázquez, in particular, embodies everything that he admires in Art — “The timelessness of the figure achieved through an objective and expert rendering of the subject’s features, clothing and setting.” *

In contrast to artist like, García, Liepke is a prolific artist and often has numerous works in progress at one time, some times as many as thirty paintings. He finds his inspiration from the people around him and his portraits are often composites of various muses. He will take photographs of various people, pin them to the wall of his studio and use the various individual’s traits to create composites for further development.

In reflecting on his work, the artist has said that: “ … [N]o matter how alone we may feel in the world—how we imagine we are experiencing things in a vacuum—we all share the same human experiences. We all have the same basic needs for connection, love and understanding. I try to reach those universal needs; it’s what’s primal in art. I try to say it through mood, color, atmosphere and texture. Bottom line: It’s the [emotion], and I just want to get it out. It’s difficult to express through words things that are so beautiful that they have no words. I can’t explain it. I have to paint it.” *

Floating (2014)