Layers of California • Cynthia Ona Innis
by Grace Miles
There are often aspects of an artwork that are impossible to capture with a camera lens; some quality of color or light or tangible substance that vanishes the moment a picture is snapped. It doesn’t look like that, you think, frowning at the oddly lit, washed out image on your phone screen. Maybe you then feel frustrated that you can’t save or share the artwork in a way that feels like you’re doing it justice. But could an argument be made for the unique significance, or the singular intimacy, of such an artwork experience that defies replication?
Before the luminous abstract landscapes of Cynthia Ona Innis, the human eye savors all the nuance that a camera lens stifles. Glossy sheens of paint and glimmering strips of metallic fabric reveal themselves as one moves around the painting, a mere tilt of the head igniting colors and textures across its surface. Such visual manipulation is Innis’ way of echoing the changeable essence of nature itself, using layers of acrylic paint and dyed fabric to simultaneously incorporate multiple perspectives of the same natura landscape. In this abstract fashion, she lets the boundaries between the past and future, the visible and invisible, blur into one.
Cynthia Ona Innis, Summerland, acrylic paint and fabric, sewn & stretched
Born in San Diego to an architect and a floral designer, it was perhaps simply in Innis’ nature to view the world with a keen eye for design and detail. After attending an art magnet high school, she was admitted to the University of California, Berkeley, as a declared art major. While in undergrad, she studied under the guidance of Joan Brown, a tenured art professor and prominent artist of the Bay Area’s Figurative Movement, who would have great influence over Innis’ journey as an artist. With Brown’s assured declaration – You’re a painter! – Innis eventually adopted the medium as her primary art form. It was also during this time that Innis worked as a seamstress, which has led to her skilled affinity for incorporating myriad fabric textures into her art.
Upon graduating from Berkeley with a BFA in 1991, Innis pursued her MFA across the country at Rutgers University in New Jersey. At this advanced graduate level, her education moved away from technical art instruction and focused more on developing a deeper, more philosophically inclined understanding of what it meant to be an artist. Upon completion of the program in 1994, Innis returned to California’s Bay Area, where she taught art classes at numerous San Francisco colleges and continues to exhibit her own work in solo and group exhibitions throughout California and beyond.
Innis’ latest body of work examines the landscapes of coastal California, as recalled through the dreamlike filter of memory. Because the series was started while the state was deep amid the initial lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic, Innis was unable to physically travel to many of the locations she wanted to paint. Therefore, she had to rely on her memories of those places, adding a compelling dimension to these works that essentially become abstract renderings of an already abstract image in the mind.
Cynthia Ona Innis, Santa Ynez, acrylic paint & cotton fabric, sewn & stretched
A number of these landscapes depict scenes and locations throughout the Santa Barbara area, utilizing color and nebulous forms to capture their likeness. Anyone acquainted with California’s gloomy coastal fog will find something familiar in the moody grays and lavender of Overcast, where traces of storm, sea and sand seem to coalesce.
The twilight-hued Santa Ynez uses tight bands of navy blue and seeping stains of violet to express the simmering energy that exists between the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Ynez mountains, as the neighboring forces compete for prominence in the local topography.
In Summerland, seashell pink and tangerine orange summon a warm sense of beach town respite, an idyllic vision of its namesake. With the maritime theme further emphasized by incorporating bits of sailcloth within the composition, a soft blue sky appears to cradle an ocean tinged with the last rays of sunset.
Innis maintains that her paintings are “not one liners,” and their meaning is “not always obvious.” Between the layers of paint and fabric, she leaves room for viewers to analyze and explore, coming to their own conclusions about what a piece might signify. Similar to how Innis draws from her own memory and experience to create the paintings, viewers are invited to connect with the paintings in ways that are unique to them.
Cynthia Ona Innis, Seabright, acrylic paint and fabric on wood panel
When displayed together in a gallery or exhibition, Innis’ landscapes are carefully arranged to be in conversation with each other, contributing to a greater narrative that wouldn’t be the same absent any one piece. Their resistance to standard photography only reinforces their likeness to the landscapes they were inspired by–defined through subtle layers of color and texture, forever changing as light and terrain shifts, and best experienced in person.
Much of Innis’ work can be found at the Walter Maciel Gallery in Los Angeles, and will be on display this summer as part of a group show, Future Patchwork, which opens July.
Cover image: Cynthia Ona Innis, Pink Stitch
