Mara De Luca, a Los Angeles based painter, approaches her process driven abstract work through a variety of influences that include graphic designer advertisements, literary sources and art historical investigations. Within this contextual framework, De Luca pours and overlays paint, fabric and other materials on raw unprimed canvas. The saturation of materials combines to create monochromatic surfaces that vibrate with atmospheric and radiant depth. Her customized framing devices exert a formalistic control, often extending off the pictorial plane adding sculptural and formal emphasis and are intended to glamorize and add fantasy to the sometimes bleak, industrial landscapes of LA freeways and billboard advertisements. Her reaction to the sky and landscape of southern CA is fused with poetry, literature, glowing nighttime sunsets, and the vacant, eerie ethos of high fashion photography.
De Luca has had exhibitions at the Irvine Fine Arts Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Edward Cella Art +Architecture, Quint Contemporary Art, La Jolla, Otis in LA, and the Palm Springs Art Museum.