As August draws to a close, it is the season for staying home, leafing lazily through art books and books on the sofa, with a vase of seasonal flowers in full bloom on the coffee table ahead. In Hilary Pecis’s paintings, that is exactly the kind of languid summer moment that comes into view.
“Color, for me, means joy, liveliness, life, and celebration,” Pecis told us. On August 12, 2023, at TAG Art Museum by the sea in Qingdao, Pecis’s first solo museum exhibition in Asia, “Orbiting,” opened with more than twenty paintings made over the past five years, including two large-scale works created במיוחד for the exhibition.
On the eve of the exhibition, we interviewed the “L.A. girl” remotely about her work and her life. As one of the most sought-after young artists in the international art world, Pecis places a far greater value on life as it is lived than one might imagine. That may also be why the still lifes and domestic scenes in her paintings are always so moving, so true, and so full of warmth.
“The title of this exhibition, ‘Orbiting,’ refers to the spaces I comfortably move through in everyday life, the spaces depicted in these paintings,” the artist told us. In the show, we see Pecis’s kitchen, where bottles, jars, condiments, and utensils sit together in cheerful disorder; a dining table covered with a pink-striped cloth, where bright red strawberries and green kiwis sharpen the appetite; and a red sofa piled with patterned cushions, inviting you to dive into the soft fabric and spend an easy afternoon there, with books stacked on the table as if someone might pull one out and begin reading at any moment. Hilary Pecis, “Sweet Sour Bitter Spicy,” 2020. Hilary Pecis, “Leisurely Afternoon,” 2020.
Pecis’s work inevitably calls to mind the still lifes of Henri Matisse and David Hockney, though she builds within her pictures a distinctly relaxed and contemporary understanding of art history. David Hockney, “Studio Interior,” 2014. Henri Matisse, “Goldfish,” 1912. Speaking of art history’s influence on her, Pecis recalled the first time she saw Matisse at her cousin’s house: “There was a reproduction of Matisse’s 1912 painting ‘Goldfish’ hanging on the wall, and I remember thinking, ‘This is the best painting I’ve ever seen in my life.’ It completely changed the way I saw things.”
In Pecis’s paintings, kaleidoscopic color never feels chaotic. Instead, the vivid hues and dense patterns create a heightened sense of space. It is not a remote, untouchable space, something to be admired only from afar, but a real, physical one, sharpened by an intense attentiveness to the small particulars of life. Hilary Pecis, “Strawberries,” 2021.
These flowers, fruits, foods, art books, books, and everyday streets and storefronts draw us into the artist’s world and invite us into her daily life. Alongside the interiors, we also see the artist stepping outside, taking us into the broader urban spaces and natural landscapes of the American West Coast. Hilary Pecis, “Echo Park,” 2020. Hilary Pecis, “Di Palo’s Window,” 2022.
At liquor stores, butcher shops, parks, ponds, and beaches, even in a helicopter looking down over the Grand Canyon, the artist records her daily life with the care and specificity of a diary. We also saw a tea-cake shop in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, a detail that was hard not to smile at. Hilary Pecis, “Tea Cake Shop,” 2020.
“The visual effect of these Chinese shops is always incredible. Sadly, I’ve never been to China, but I love wandering around Chinatown, and that is probably my main connection to China,” Pecis said. “Joy’s,” and “Overlook,” both in the exhibition gallery, are new works Pecis made for this show. Hilary Pecis, “Joy’s,” 2023.
Joy’s is a seafood restaurant in Miami known for stone crab. Every year during the Miami art fair, the artist and her friends make a point of going there. She photographs the food as a record, but also as a way of commemorating time spent with friends who have come from all over.
“I’ve always been deeply drawn to the contrast between the crab’s bright red shell and the black. I especially loved the composition of this photograph and its incredible color, so when I got back to the studio I painted it. This restaurant is a place where chance encounters happen all year long,” Pecis said. “Overlook,” meanwhile, depicts the Grand Canyon in Nevada seen from above: looking down into the canyon, the sandstone turns fantastical shades of purple, pink-brown, and pale yellow in the sunlight, its grainy texture almost like blocks of sunset congealed. Hilary Pecis, “Overlook,” 2023.
“I had never painted the Grand Canyon from above before. I had painted the north and south rims, because that was on the route I took when I went to visit family. This time it was a completely new perspective. I like that combination of interior and exterior feeling, and that sensation of zooming in and out.” Most of the works in the exhibition are large, some larger than a person; when you step closer, it can feel as if you are about to enter the painted scene itself.
Some of the smaller works were completed in 2018, which was also the beginning of Pecis’s life as a professional artist in any true sense.
“Aside from the scale of the canvases, my style hasn’t changed very much over the past five years. Even now, I’m still trying to figure out how to describe and convey clearly, in a painting, the image I want to communicate to the viewer. But isn’t the most exciting part of making a painting precisely not knowing how you’re going to reach your goal? In the end, when all the elements come together, the magic happens.” In fact, it was only five years ago that Pecis began treating art-making as her full-time work; before that, she worked at a gallery and painted small pictures in the studio in her spare time.
Earlier still, she painted in the studio during the day and worked part-time in a restaurant at night. She rather liked that way of life: restaurant work gave her a temporary release from art-making, a bit of mental rest. “When I was a child, I already believed I was an artist. As I got older, I questioned that assumption more and more, but I always came back to one idea: no matter what kind of job I do during the day, I will always keep making art.”
For Pecis, painting is a way of life, a way of understanding life, without any utilitarian motive attached to it. “Before I became a full-time artist, I wanted to make sure I could really achieve something in my work, so it wasn’t until five years ago that I quit my job and devoted myself to painting in the studio. Only then did I also have the time to make larger works.” Hilary Pecis, “Candle in the Garden,” 2021.
Her success in the art market is plain enough to see: her work has drawn the attention of major museums, art institutions, and collectors around the world, and has entered the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Sifang Art Museum, and the Yuz Museum, among others. Yet despite her commercial success, Pecis still seems to relish quiet ordinary life, to notice beauty in the unremarkable, and to be content within the small scale of her own days. Hilary Pecis, “Collection From Everywhere,” 2020.
It is hard to say that this freedom and ease have nothing to do with Los Angeles, the city where she lives. She was born in Los Angeles, but because of her parents’ work, the family moved in her childhood to Redding, in Northern California.
“My parents worked for the government. Their jobs didn’t require creativity, exactly, but in daily life they always approached problems in creative ways. When I was little, there were always materials around for us to make things with. Making things by hand has been the love of my life.” Although Redding’s climate resembles that of Southern California, the atmosphere of the city is entirely different.
“It was a somewhat sleepy small town, with a very small population, near the Oregon border, and Interstate 5 ran right through it. Lots of small punk bands would pass through on their way to and from gigs.” It was for that reason that, after completing her M.F.A. at California College of the Arts, Pecis settled in Los Angeles on her own.
“The climate and scenery of L.A. suit me perfectly. Visually, it is endlessly inspiring to me. The whole city is full of energy and vitality, an ideal place for an artist to live,” Pecis said. Even when she was in school at California College of the Arts, she maintained a commitment to figurative painting, saving countless photographs and images so that whenever inspiration failed, she could look back through them, find a suitable point of departure, and start painting. It has since become her primary working method.
How does she gather such an enormous store of source material for her paintings? Does the artist spend every day endlessly on the move? That was one of our larger questions. In fact, in addition to being an artist, Pecis is a devoted runner, logging seventy-two to eighty-eight kilometers a week. Along the way, she has used her iPhone to capture countless moments belonging to Los Angeles.
“I run fairly slowly, so I have enough time to observe my surroundings closely. Los Angeles has so many beautiful colors, plants, hills, signs, and paths. Whenever I step out my door, I use my phone to photograph everything I see. Running demands endurance, and I like to think of painting as an endurance activity too. Each painting is itself a series of small actions that eventually come together as a whole.” Pecis said that she never tries to calculate exactly how long a painting will take to finish. Sometimes she gets stuck, but for her that is part of the magic of making things.
“I move back and forth among paintings, trying to stay in motion so I can find solutions, so in the studio I’m actually not still very much. If no new problem arose, I might get very bored,” Pecis said with a laugh. “Sometimes I focus on describing one specific thing; at other times, I let my thoughts wander freely and follow the movement of painting itself.”
She told us that she has an assistant in the studio. She used to listen to music or podcasts, but now the two of them spend a great deal of time talking while they paint.
“Unless I’m tripped up by some difficulty in the work,” the artist said. Her studio, near Glassell Park in Los Angeles, is large. Just inside the entrance is an office; beyond that lies the main studio, crowded with paint, the floor spattered all over, and a huge table set in the middle. Hilary Pecis, “Anemones in Black Vase,” 2020.
“Usually I have one or two stacks of books on the table, the work I’m painting, and some arrangements of flowers and plants. When I start a painting, I make a sketch very quickly, then I block in large areas of color right away to get rid of the white. After that, I paint more slowly.” That is how Pecis described her working process. Her schedule is highly regular, like that of a nine-to-five office worker. Sometimes she also takes her ten-year-old child along when she visits the studios of artist friends.
On Pecis’s social media, she is nearly always laughing: with friends, with her child, at exhibition openings, at the moment she crosses the finish line of a marathon, even when she has accidentally splashed herself with paint. “I can only say that I’m someone who has always been happy. I find an endless source of joyful inspiration around me, and when I paint, I bring those feelings into the work.” Hilary Pecis, “Market,” 2019.
“For me, as long as I’m not deliberately imitating someone else, a distinctive artistic style will naturally emerge and flow. I love painting so much that sometimes I can hardly believe my luck, that I get to be a full-time artist.” Image courtesy of the artist’s studio, Spurs Gallery, and TAG Art Museum; exhibition installation photographs by Chao Qixuan.