Rick Monzon’s fascination with idyllic suburban settings and otherworldly shapes began at the age of eight when his parents moved into a new L.A. housing tract. With the foundation set for what would become his artistic sensibility, Monzon began painting houses in the 1980’s. His early works were straightforward depictions later evolving with the influences of Mexican culture, the Catholic Church, Dutch Landscape and Hudson River School painters. The evolution of Monzon’s work into the current surreal and oddly placid depictions of homes and landscapes arose from a fascination with an unseen life hidden behind too perfect walls. Monzon explains, “My intention in these paintings is to convey the modern predicament and undercurrent of anxiety that I feel lies beneath the placid veneer of suburban streets and homes. In my work the safe and domesticated forms of suburbia find themselves unsettled by a re-emerging flow of life. And with darkness is always the balance of light as a symbol of truth and the possibility of redemption.”
Monzon attended The Art Center School of Design in Pasadena and The Academy of Art College in San Francisco.
San Francisco photographer Carol Charney began her career as an abstract painter, progressively moving toward abstraction in photography. In her ‘Interior Landscape’ series, Charney uses the natural distortions present in our everyday world – moisture on windows, swirling smoke, rising walls of mist – to transform the landscape into an unfamiliar world of concealment and uncertainty. The transformation evokes a painterly quality, while still retaining a connection to the realism inherent in photography.
Charney achieved an M.F.A. in photography from San Jose State University in 2000. She has shown extensively throughout California. Her work is highlighted in the April 2006 issue of California Home and Design Magazine.
With iridescent pigments on a dark background, abstract painter Nicholas Battis creates a fluid dreamscape of light and depth. Reminiscent of underwater scenes, these paintings glow with overlapping forms in a simplified, yet effective dimensional space. By mixing powdered pigments with diluted painting medium and by using compressed air to move the mixture, Battis has been able to transfer his affinity for the spontaneity of watercolor to canvas.
The artist views these paintings and their fiery bursts of color as a salute to painting, and to the perseverance of himself and colleagues who continue in this traditional medium in an art world environment more attune to technology, media and pop-culture.
Nicholas Battis received his MFA from Pratt Institute. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
George Billis Gallery, L.A. is located at 2716 S. La Cienega Blvd., between Venice and Washington Boulevards in Los Angeles and is open Tuesday – Saturday from 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. The gallery recently opened its second location in the Culver City area of Los Angeles, and marks its ninth year in the Chelsea arts district in New York City. George Billis shows work by both emerging and established artists. For more information please contact the Gallery via e-mail at
LA@georgebillis.com or visit our website at www.georgebillis.com
