Upon entering the room, onlookers are met with snap shots of the ocean floor: deep-complex layers of rock exposing hidden life.
A few more steps, and these images begin to collide with celestial landscapes in the form of bright pink tentacles wrapped around a galactic night sky. On the farthest wall, the audience comes face to face with scenes of destinations from a foreign land.
“It’s called “Odyssey” because it’s about the journey that Makaila [and I] have been through and the places that we’ve explored,” Rachel Gehrke said, explaining her experiences swim with the ocean while her cohort, Mikaila Palmer, captured her travels across the pond in paint. “Each painting is like our memories of that place and how it’s kind of changed us as a person.”
Gehrke and Palmer are two senior BFA drawing and painting students at California State University, Long Beach who combined forces to create their appropriately titled exhibit on Sunday at the West Max L. Gatov Gallery, transforming the showroom into another world.
Color is key when it comes to “Odyssey.”
Gehrke used intense color in her paintings to capture the parallels between the cosmos and the deepest parts of the ocean.
Meanwhile, Palmer used color to portray a series of foreign city memory-scapes, which seemingly evoke the excitement attached to new experiences in new places.
All of the works are of re-imagined places that they have a personal connection with, which are portrayed using oil on canvas with the exception of a couple of drawings done with acrylic, ink, pastels and charcoal on paper by Gehrke.
Gehrke said that her work is based off of the imagery she registers while scuba diving. Growing up in San Diego, she said that she was practically raised on the beaches.
“You see the weirdest things down there,” Gehrke said. “Weird creatures, crazy colors and it’s just so mysterious.”
She said that she attempts to recreate a feeling of being weightless in a pitch-black vacuum with vibrant life popping out from all angles.
While Gehrke’s work is based on sub-aquatic exploration, Palmer’s work is based off of her transatlantic trip to Europe.
“I studied abroad last fall,” said Palmer. “I went to Florence for four months [and] really developed the love of traveling.”
While abroad, the country’s colorful currency, the Euro, inspired Palmer.
All of Palmer’s paintings bear a common thread. The top half consists of a colorful portrayal on the European landscape, while the bottom half incorporates images from the Euro, such as stars and bridges.
Twenty-four-year-old CSULB alumna Sarina Patel said that when she first saw Palmer’s piece titled “Florence,” she knew exactly what city it was. She said that she was able to recognize all of the places in Palmer’s paintings.
“[Palmer’s vision] is different,” Patel said. “But I feel like this is kind of like my vision too, because everything that’s in there is just so familiar.”
At first Palmer and Gehrke were planning on doing solo shows, but ended up meshing their shows together after they realized they both had similar artist statements and a common theme to their work.
“We were like, “let’s just do it together and go out with a bang,”” Palmer added.