13ThingsLA: January 29

Go Deeper for your art calendar

Cathleen Clarke, The Cosmos, 2024, oil and acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 in (Courtesy of Night Gallery)

REVIEWS at Night Gallery, The Landing, and Charlie James Gallery. Plus, even more PST:Art programs, ongoing art world support for LA Fire Relief, and hearty exhibition and event recommendations at Make Room, LACMA, Craft Contemporary, Pace Gallery, The Brand Library, The Skirball, Oxy Live, Hulett Collection/Marshall Gallery, The Wallis, American Cinematheque—oh, and a little extra David Lynch, as a treat. Plus on Wednesday the 29th I’ll be at the Thomas Cooper Studio art and design open house and conversation party, come hang out!

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Feature

Cathleen Clarke, The Weeping Willow, 2024, oil and acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 in (Courtesy of Night Gallery)

REVIEW: Cathleen Clarke: Morning Star at Night Gallery. This suite of captivating, imaginative paintings by Cathleen Clarke are both exactly and not at all what they seem. They fairly burst off the walls, almost unable to contain the radiant flares of her saturated palette (especially an incandescent barn-red and splendid temperate verdance). At the same time, their initially straightforward presentation of pastoral childhood memories of rural life retreats, like smoke, the more you try to settle into the scenes. Faceless figures and fiery flowers are equally subjected to the bleary streaks of elusive recall, while animals and elements of setting (and one scene-stealing chicken) pop in precision of detail. Clarke’s visual meditations on how memories are influenced by the passage of time, open to subsequent emotional interpretation and even invention, are also a masterful wielding of colorist bravado and painterly dream logic. In larger works we see a proliferation of successive stylistic codes, opportunities to introduce pattern and primary patinas; but in more intimate works the artist is not afraid to lead with ambiguity as she moves between mystery and meaning. On view through February 15 in downtown; nightgallery.ca. —SND

Cathleen Clarke, Morning Star, installation view at Night Gallery, 2025

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