College Art Instructor Exhibits Paintings

Two contemporary Los Angeles painters, Marc Trujillo and Sean Cheetham, will present their first show together through March 10 at the Santa Monica College Pete & Susan Barrett Art Gallery.

The exhibit, “Faces and Places,” will display finished paintings, preparatory works, sketchbooks and other work that informs the studio practice for both artists.

The show runs Feb. 14-March 10, with the opening reception from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Feb. 24. The gallery is located in the college's Performing Arts Center on Santa Monica Boulevard at 11th Street.

Trujillo, a Santa Monica College art professor, is best known for works in oil depicting Target interiors, Costco parking lots, fast-food restaurants, and reflective building fronts—places he calls “non-destinations, particularly North American kinds of nowhere."

Trujillo has shown widely on both East and West coasts, including solo exhibitions in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. A recipient of the 2001 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, Trujillo was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 2008.

Trujillo depicts his contemporary urban surroundings with detail and lucidity. Although he uses photographs for reference, his paintings are not photorealistic, and he cites artists such as Vermeer, Velazquez, and Rembrandt as inspiration for his craft of painting.

Cheetham is a contemporary oil painter whose training is steeped in traditional portraiture. Born in San Francisco, he is a graduate of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He has exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2005 where he was included in the BP awards show. He currently lives and teaches painting in Los Angeles.

The show at the Pete and Susan Barrett Gallery will examine the relationship between Trujillo and Cheetham's individual teaching methods and the ways in which they develop their personal work for exhibition.

Gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. For information, call (310) 434-3434.