MICHELE RAMIREZ

I grew up surrounded by the natural color fields of California’s San Joaquin Valley. Crop rotations regularly presented different shapes and textures, and each season brought new colors in sections and rows. These geometric structures and planes that formed the wide-open landscape of my youth have always played strongly in my imagination and in my compositions.

Family ties frequently return me to the Valley, where I remain inspired by the relatively empty spaces plotted under large skies. They are a welcome contrast to the more complex blocks and lines of the city I now call home. The highways and roads slicing through all of these California landscapes divide and order space into the most elemental forms of drawing and painting. These lines and structures bear the weight of my compositions. Color ties them to emotion. In my paintings, elements of abstraction and formal structure are incorporated to lend ambiguity to the implied narrative of each piece. The story is left to the viewer.