Presented by Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art

After more than a decade of exploring sculpture as a medium, Ochoa returns to his painting practice to create large-scale, mixed-media sculptural canvases that draw inspiration from California Impressionism, various contemporary art movements, and even diverse popular culture sources. Ochoa reduces his landscapes to two tones, representing earth and sky. For the blue skies, Ochoa turned to house paint—a medium famously used by abstract expressionist Franz Kline. In selecting the various tones, Ochoa was intrigued with the paint colors of lifestyle icon Martha Stewart, because of their poetic names—Cloudless Day, Darkening Sky, Morning Fog, etc.—which could be appropriated for the titles of the paintings as well as the exhibition title. Their names also refer to nature, and Ochoa relishes the irony that we paint our interior walls with colors that allude to the external environment. We build shelters to protect ourselves from the elements and yet paint our walls with colors that directly reflect the outside world. Ochoa’s deceptively simple compositions juxtapose monochromatic skies with rugged, earthy terrains. Far from traditional formal or geometric abstractions, the flat, single-toned skies disclose texture in horizontal or vertical grooves created by applying the paint with a handheld broom or push broom. The landscapes are composed of dirt, specifically California dirt that is a mix of sand and gravel, the kind used as an aggregate for concrete. One of the artist’s signature materials, it is a deliberate reference to the urban landscape of Los Angeles. This approach counters the tradition of the painted vistas that celebrates Nature’s beauty and embodies “a continuation of Ochoa’s interest in the poetic potential of vernacular materials and urban signifiers.” The rough dirt brings a three-dimensional, sculptural presence to the work, and the artist has enhanced this perception by using three-inch stretcher bars to increase the depth of the painting. The exaggerated, yet pared-down constructions simultaneously signify contradictory elements: nature and industry, representation and abstraction, content and formalism. Ochoa’s powerful paintings make direct correlations to the Wadsworth’s celebrated collection of Hudson River School paintings and mid-century abstract works, including those by Morris Louis and Barnett Newman.