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Los Angeles artist Marc Trujillo paints portraits of American wastelands. Trujillo’s delicately rendered images of wholesale stores, fast-food restaurants, and gas stations are somehow stately, yet desolate.

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Trujillo’s paintings are quite impressive in the level of detail that the artist is able to capture. The paintings of Costco interiors in the artist’s North American Purgatory series are especially intriguing – the grey, expansive landscape of the aisles becomes somehow far more interesting when rendered in paint, and Trujillo’s attention to details as small as the font on price markers adds a sort of terrifying level of realism.

Also quite lovely are Trujillo’s nighttime exterior paintings – these views of gas stations in deserted areas remind me of the works of Andrew Valko or Trevor Young, both of whom specialize in paintings imbued with a deep sense of desolation. This emotion or lack thereof is something that Trujillo expertly captures as well, despite the proliferation of human figures within the works.

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