The Roots and the Flowers, acrylic on panel

Glen Rubsamen received his BFA and MFA from the University of California in Los Angeles, and has exhibited his works in solo shows throughout Europe and New York. The artist creates silhouette paintings of billboards and trees that could be in California but are removed from all context, creating odd snapshots of half-remembered places.

The Riddle of the Universe, acrylic on panel

I really enjoy Rubsamen’s paintings, particularly the way he renders the skies. Each work has the look of a snapshot taken at dawn or dusk, with orange, purple and blue gradients serving as the main source of colour in each work. Each of his recent paintings features a structure of some sort, usually a billboard rising high above any other visible buildings.

Like Andrew Valko, Rubsamen seems to have a passionate interest in the way a painting interacts with the subject of another flat image surface, but where Valko details projections of movie scenes, Rubsamen leaves his billboards blank, or covers them with a complementary colour gradient. 

The Naked and the Dead, acrylic on panel