The Koplin Del Rio Gallery is pleased to announce its fourth exhibition of oil paintings by Southern California artist Darlene Campbell. The show is entitled, “Portraits of California.” With this exhibit, Darlene Campbell continues her chronicle of the physical transformations shaping the Golden State. Images of reconfigured hillsides laced with new roadways, terraced knolls, ridge-top trophy houses, concrete drainage channels, freeway pillars, and the accoutrements of land moving equipment all capture a landscape in transition.

Darlene Campbell’s paintings suggest an anonymous sameness and interchangeability that depict a world that is clearly Californian. Her work raises questions about our relationship to the landscape and the psychological estrangement we feel as our surroundings are transformed into generic developments. As Campbell’s paintings suggest, the sprawl so characteristic of the California panorama is more than a geographical reality; it is a metaphor for the loss of place. Ironically, in our desire for privacy, seclusion, and opportunity, we have irrevocably altered the very landscape that drew us to the suburban ideal.

Campbell’s paintings employ beauty to disarm the viewer. Alluding to old, religious icons through the use of wood panels, gold leaf, and the arched form, she creates beautiful images that suggest history and age. Employing golden-hued light and dramatic clouds, Campbell coaxes beauty out of the banal and, in so doing, mimics romantic 17th century landscape paintings. However, in contrast to expansive Renaissance paintings, the scale of her work is quite small. Her paintings, which average   9” x 12”, provide us with a glimpse of our future, mirrored with disturbing clarity. In Spent, large concrete columns and drainage pipes litter a construction site. Their crumbling beauty alludes to a discarded past while portending predictable change. Their worn condition suggests the passing of time and the impermanence of things once thought strong and stable.

In The More Things Change, The More They Become The Same, the past and the present come together in a ubiquitous California construction site. Sandbags are stacked against a classical column as if to salvage some remnant of our historic past. In the foreground, a concrete funnel sits ready to fortify the inevitable transformation.

In Conga Line, a trail of earthmovers cuts across the horizon winding its way over a newly reconfigured hillside. They follow each other in a seemingly endless formation, rolling forward with unstoppable momentum. As these monster-sized machines dance across the landscape, their relentless movement is at once captivating and intimidating.

Darlene Campbell earned her B.A. in Art from the University of Redlands (1979) and her M.F.A. in Painting from The Claremont Graduate University (1986). Most recently, her work has been featured at the San Jose Museum of Art, Loyola Marymount University, the Laguna Art Museum, the Riverside Art Museum, Barnsdall Art Park, and the Frye Art Museum (Seattle). Darlene Campbell has also illustrated two published books. In 2004, one of her paintings was used as the cover artwork for D.J. Waldie’s book, Where We Are Now: Notes From Los Angeles. Darlene currently teaches painting and drawing at the Laguna College of Art and Design. She lives in Laguna Beach, California.