For the past year, Los Angeles-based painter Vanessa Prager has been thinking and dreaming in vivid layers, and now she’s showing the bold new work she’s created at Santa Monica’s Richard Heller Gallery on Saturday, February 21. Dreamers, her new series of large-scale oil paintings, draws viewers with lush layers of colorful brushstrokes that blur together to reveal abstract, almost sculptural portraits that almost appear to be three-dimensional. The L.A. native, whose studio is in Glendale, is known for her detailed ballpoint drawings and vivid paintings, but this new series is a striking departure in technique for Prager. The artists says Dreamers served as a personal outlet and led to an evolution in style. “I think this series is the most borderline sculptural work I’ve done and definitely the biggest and most raw feeling to me,” she says, adding that the end of a relationship sparked the images. “I was just like trying to get to the bottom of things and address the real problems and sometimes that can be so hard,” she says. Prager remembers feeling as though every brushstroke transferred her feelings to the canvases. The rich layers, in turn, started to appear. “Instead of completely covering it or pretending it wasn’t there, I started using it as the push into what the new image actually was,” she says of the layering technique. Surrounded by the large portraits in her studio, Prager says L.A. is a never-ending influence not only on her work, but also in her artistic process. She finds solace and inspiration while hiking through Griffith Park. “It’s so nice to have that in the middle of the city,” she says of the 4,310-acre natural area. “I kind of like the view from the top, the exercise involved, and just shutting off.” Pragers Dreamers are on view through March 21.

By Jessica Estrada

Pictured: Vanessa Prager inside her Glendale studio.
Photo by: Jeff Vespa

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