Description
‘Crimson Forest Lawn’ by Zach Mendoza
Artist: Zach Mendoza
Title: ‘Crimson Forest Lawn’
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 6″ x 4″
Framing: Unframed
Year of Creation: 2022
About the Artwork:
“This painting is part of an ongoing series of portraits that I’ve been working on from photographs of sculptures and headstones that I took from Forest Lawn Memorial in Hollywood, CA years ago. I always found Forest Lawn to be one of the quietest and most lovely parts of the LA area when I lived there. It is a lush hillside that exists adjacent to a bustling city and an ever-busy freeway. There is a unique solemnity to the cemetery of course, but there is a great beauty to the well-trimmed grass and windy hill streets that traverse the hills. There is already so much symbolism built into these objects that stand above the earth and I think that this is an interesting space to occupy my mind while working. I think about ways to construct new meanings atop these structures through my interpretation. Color is a tool that I’ve been playing with and choose to use with these. I think that there is a lot of room to run with monochrome despite what seems like a limitation. A single color can influence the work in a number of ways and the choice of color, similarly, seems to flavor the painting in a particular way also. Certain colors are reserved for the quiet solemnity subjects and others for the lighter ones and the historical use of colors in paintings and images to elicit certain emotions is something I’ve thought about in these as well. I think of the sculptor’s artistic choices in these commissioned marble subjects and I think most visitors to the cemetery find these symbols immediately identifiable. The common upward gazes suggest hope and the downward ones suggest mourning. There are often floral motifs to suggest spring and rebirth and these things still command a sense of quiet not unlike a painting in a gallery. I think that people go to see art in galleries to pursue this same sense of transcendent quiet. Headstones command reflection and I am fascinated by them.” – Zach Mendoza
About the Artist:
(Artist Bio)
Zach Mendoza is a painter currently based in Houston, TX with a growing exhibition history of solo and group shows throughout the United States. His work has been included in New American Paintings, Creative Quarterly, and in online publications.