Painting from life, particularly landscape painting, has been central to Sandra Mendelsohn Rubin’s practice since the 1980s. In her current exhibition A Common Thread, she has turned to digital photography as an added resource to capture the expansive scenery surrounding her Northern California home in Mendocino County. To depict these scenes from an elevated perspective, Rubin has referenced photography shot from an airplane or remote controlled drone, providing her access to views that would otherwise be inaccessible. Through this process, the artist is left with hundreds of digital images to sift through, which she closely analyzed for potential. More often, Rubin takes aspects from alternate views of the same location to build the desirable composition.

Portrait from Home (pictured above) is a painting of her home as seen from above. In this painting, Rubin intended to feature the isolation of her property in the context of its surrounding environment. Pictured directly below are two of the images she referenced to develop this work. The image on the right informed the compositional foundation, while the image on the left was used to depict the quality of light in the painting.

To learn more about these works, we’ll be posting a video interview with the artist in the next few weeks – stay tuned!

Sandra Mendelsohn Rubin: A Common Thread will remain on view at L.A. Louver through March 28, 2015.

IMAGES: (top to bottom) Sandra Mendelsohn Rubin, Portrait of Home, 2011, oil on polyester, 4 x 15 in. (10.2 x 38.1 cm); aerial digital photographs of Rubin’s home (courtesy of the artist)