Marcia Roberts

In 1981, Marcia Roberts debuted her first one-person exhibition: a series of predominantly grey, abstract paintings at Asher-Faure Gallery in Los Angeles. On first glance these images’ balanced gradations were almost imperceptible in their subtlety. Once the viewer slowed to the works’ required patience, their surfaces were revealed to have been meticulously constructed with countless thin layers of paint in an array of tones, producing a glowing effect as if the canvases themselves were radiating from within.

Over the subsequent 35 years, Roberts has established her extraordinary commitment to the slow, delicate and methodical process of realizing these luminescent planes. Grounded in concerns she shared with other artists who emerged from Southern California’s Light and Space movement, she staked out a unique approach by rejecting the implementation of modern technology, holding fast to pigment and brush. In her practice, paint is light, and her guiding force is to better describe light’s ethereal yet physical nature.