Kate Pincus-Whitney loves paint. And Los Angeles. And food.
These are three things you’ll learn quickly by speaking with her, but her paintings tell you everything you need to know. Large scale, textured and layered with food, objects and history, the pieces for the artist’s first solo show “To Live and Dine in LA/You Taste Like Home” are portals made of acrylic paint. They let viewers into a world where martini glasses wiggle and the squiggle of cream on top of stuffed celery from Musso and Frank’s leaps off the canvas.
On her tables, all of L.A. history sits together.
“[California] is five, seven million different narratives going on all at the same time,” Pincus-Whitney says, “and they're all intertwined, and the most basic aspect of it all is to eat.” The pieces now hang in the Anat Ebgi gallery on Wilshire Boulevard and are on view through Aug. 17.
I was able to get a sneak peek for this article a few weeks ago, meeting Pincus-Whitney while she prepped for the show in her Downtown L.A. fashion district studio — an airy space with floor to ceiling windows that she shares with her husband, who’s also a visual artist.
“When I’m starting a painting, I first make what I call my theater,” Pincus-Whitney says. She creates something akin to a proscenium arch with strokes of flora and fauna she lays around the edge of the canvas. Birds of paradise, palm fronds, orange tree branches and more give way to the tablescapes beneath, “where you’re like a .
