Sophie Wahlquist

As a German transplant to Los Angeles, Sophie Wahlquist’s work combines the dueling sensibilities of a historically rich European lineage of figuration in painting and California’s sun-drenched prism on the natural world. Wahlquist’s paintings depart from a state of mind rather than from a narrative. Playing with different genres of painting and medium, new gestures and perspectives reverse existing ideas. She likes to negotiate the level to which absence can be replaced by clarity of something intangible or how the depiction of something recognizable can become a trigger for imagination. The artist lives and works in Los Angeles.