Gillian Keller

My saints, deities, angels, and entities are visual representations of the ephemeral.  Each moment of direct experience is packed with incredible flavor, subtlety, and magic.  This dynamism of life- that each moment is devoured by what comes next, before it can be fully experienced- is the reason I create art.  Pulling inspiration from dreams, realizations, and my spiritual perspective, I create scenes that translate the essence of a fleeting moment into something that eyes and minds can linger on.  Still, these images I create are mysterious, symbolic, dream-like…  much like reality itself, these images contain elements of knock-you-upside-the-head specificity while also containing paradox and mystery.  My artwork is about life, death, rebirth, transformation, loss, beauty, pain, confusion, transcendence… and the miracle that all those flavors of experience can be present in a single moment.

The collection of works showing here were created over a span of several years.  Though they vary greatly in technique, styling, and process, they are all idealistic, reverential odes to the way I see the world.  My older works here are tighter, coming from a desire to bring forth a vision into vivid specificity- like the feeling of being lucid in a dream.  The newer works are loose, textured, almost sculptural- and coming from an embrace of intuition, looseness, imperfection- like the sensation of recalling a dream.

In approaching this showing, I knew I wanted do something different- to create in a different way than I have been for the past ten years.  For ten years my process was meticulous.  Building precise compositions digitally, using photographs I took of specific places and things that I loved, and of people I chose (often friends, models, and myself), then blowing them up into large scale, hand cut collages - or, for a period of time, painting those compositions.  It was labor intensive, but it felt easy.  I had my process down to a science, and the only moments of uncertainty were in the digital development phase- when I would become unsure about a color choice here or there, or how to handle the background- or, later in the process, possibly how to glue down a very large shape.  It was easy because I knew exactly what the end result would look like from day 1.

But recently, something felt wrong about continuing to work this way.  During the course of making this new artwork, I switched process many times- starting a piece, realizing I hated it, ripping pieces off of it to use on a different sort of piece, laboring for days on it only to realize I hated that one, too- eventually I realized that something frightening was required of me- to finally completely let go of my need for certainty.  Strangely, this is relatively easy for me in other aspects of my experience- but “fuck it” in regards to my artwork was a completely frightening idea.  After recalling that certainty was never how I approached making artwork when I was younger, and after recalling that I allowed the spirit to move me effortlessly at that time, I somehow pushed myself back into a state of intuitive visionary flow and cranked out three new pieces- three very unusual, loose, spirited pieces that you see here.  

These new pieces - “Portal to Juniper Ridge”, “Sky God”, and “Spectral Crossing” were inspired in part by a recurring lucid dream and born from an adventure into intuitive release.

After living in San Francisco for ten years, I moved to the High Desert in 2020.  I have a studio and trailer here, where I live with my husband and our talkative husky.  I began creating artwork as “Enlightenment Barbie” in 2013 following a sudden and massive spiritual moment that I call “The Big Zing.”  I studied art at the University of Idaho in Moscow, graduating in 2010.

Josephine Close is a visual artist whose primary focus is works on paper. A self taught mixed-media painter, she has a true love of the natural world, poetry, magic, myths and fairy tales. Born in the woods of New Hampshire, she is now living in a haunted cottage in Los Angeles.

Josephine’s work was recently featured in “Witchcraft,” a Taschen book from the Library of Esoterica series. Her work can be seen in exhibits across the country. 

Wendy Lee Gadzuk is a visual artist, writer, musician and diviner living and working in the Mojave Desert of California, as well as co-curator of La Matadora Gallery. Inspired by our universal connection to the divine, she works in various mediums, resulting in 2 different bodies of visual art - finely detailed visionary work on paper incorporating traditional Byzantine iconography techniques, and altar-like 3-dimensional mixed media assemblage pieces. Over the past few years, her experience as a caregiver to her partner and others has influenced her work in a noticeable way, resulting in a series of large-scale assemblages using medical waste. The work all holds a similar thread, connecting in its own way to the collective unconscious.

Wendy recently created an oracle deck called Deconstructed Divination and released a limited edition book called 'The Magic of 8' to accompany it. She exhibits regularly in the Los Angeles area and beyond. 

About this show:

I wanted to challenge myself to work larger than I’m comfortable with. A recent move has left me temporarily without a studio, and without easy access to my troves of treasures and tools necessary for my assemblage work. I decided to do a series of patron saints on paper - my interpretation of patron saints of the healing arts. In addition to being an artist, I also work as a caregiver. This impacts my life in ways that can be difficult to put into words. I wanted to illustrate this experience - both the tenderness and the sharp edges - while paying my respects to all who work in the healthcare community.