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Angeline Rivas (born 1981) is an American painter based in Los Angeles whose airbrushed compositions merge mysticism, color theory, and California counterculture. Her work examines the intersection of belief and spectacle, translating new-age spirituality into hallucinatory abstractions that reflect on the state of transcendence within contemporary visual culture.
Angeline Rivas | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1981 (age 44–45) Kansas City, Missouri, U.S. |
| Education | BFA, Otis College of Art and Design (2005); MFA, ArtCenter College of Design (2022) |
| Known for | Painting |
| Movement | Contemporary art |
| Website | Chris Sharp Gallery – Angeline Rivas |
Early life and education
editRivas was born in 1981 in Kansas City, Missouri. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles in 2005 and her Master of Fine Arts from ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena in 2022.[1] Based in Los Angeles, her work is informed by the region's long association with experimental mysticism, spiritual exploration, and alternative cultural movements.
Career and work
editRivas works primarily with airbrush on wood panel and canvas, creating layered compositions in fluorescent gradients of color. Her paintings often combine smooth, glowing atmospheres with abrupt interruptions—marks of tape, hand-drawn graffiti, or faint residue from previous layers—revealing the physical process beneath their polished surfaces. These traces introduce a tension between illusion and materiality, evoking both visionary experience and human fallibility.
Her imagery draws upon a broad range of references, including Californian new-age philosophies, cosmic symbolism, and apocalyptic imagination. The work explores how spiritual or transcendental ideals can mutate into aesthetic experience, using light and color to visualize states of energy, faith, and collapse. Critics have associated her practice with the transcendental abstraction of Agnes Pelton, the feminist exuberance of Judy Chicago, and the pop cosmologies of Kenny Scharf, while noting her distinct synthesis of mysticism and material critique.[2]
Rivas's work extends the lineage of Southern California's Light and Space artists by channeling their optical experimentation through a more introspective and symbolic framework. Her compositions occupy a space between transcendence and entropy—moments where visionary color collapses into the physical reality of paint and gesture.[3]
Style and themes
editRivas's paintings are built around contrasts: light and density, order and dissolution, sincerity and artifice. Using the airbrush as a drawing tool rather than a purely mechanical one, she layers color into shifting gradients that blur distinctions between surface and depth. The fluorescent palette—dominated by pinks, blues, and greens—suggests both the artificial glow of screen light and the aura of visionary experience.
Subtle imperfections and visible edges of tape serve as reminders of touch and time, grounding her otherworldly imagery in everyday gesture. Through this interplay of precision and residue, Rivas visualizes spirituality not as escape but as a process of searching—one rooted in the cultural and psychological landscapes of California. Her paintings evoke the paradox of revelation and collapse, capturing the ecstatic instability that defines contemporary forms of belief.
Selected solo exhibitions
edit- 2023: MKUltramarine, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles, CA[4]
Selected group exhibitions
editSelected press
editSee also
editReferences
edit- ↑ "Angeline Rivas CV". Chris Sharp Gallery. Retrieved 22 October 2025.
- ↑ "Best in Show: Artillery 2023 Top Ten". Artillery. 2023. Retrieved 22 October 2025.
- ↑ "Angeline Rivas". Chris Sharp Gallery. Retrieved 22 October 2025.
- 1 2 3 4 "Angeline Rivas". Chris Sharp Gallery. Retrieved 22 October 2025.
- ↑ "Best in Show: Artillery 2023 Top Ten". Artillery. 2023. Retrieved 22 October 2025.
- ↑ "The Best Booths at Felix LA 2024". ARTnews. 2024. Retrieved 22 October 2025.
- ↑ "Art and Astrology: Los Angeles". Art Basel. 2023. Retrieved 22 October 2025.