Going Places: Featuring Jamie F. Adams, Todd Carpenter, Yuimko Glover & Mary Lai

LAUNCH LA is proud to present Going Places, an exhibition featuring four Los Angeles-based artists who skillfully interpret our local environment, real and imagined, through expert execution and unique styles of painting. Jamie F. Adams is a seasoned studio and plein air painter who captures the personality and beauty of Los Angeles nature and architecture with aplomb. Todd Carpenter pushes, pulls and manipulates monochromatic oil paint to deliver modestly scaled, realistic paintings of natural and urban settings. Yumiko Glover creates whimsical paintings from her imagination that represent hope inspired by natural beauty around us. Mary Lai captures all the inspiration and nuance that Los Angeles provides to paint deeply personal and highly imaginative ideas and imagery.

Jamie F. Adams presents contemporary landscape paintings from three ongoing series described here by the artist. 

“The Willow Series paintings are loosely based on plein air ink drawings of willow trees that I have been drawing for several years in the LA River near my studio in Glendale. I wanted to take the twisted forms of these trees and create a different imagined world around them. They became heroic portraits of these trees as they thrive in the bleakness of their surroundings. The act of setting up my French easel in the industrial margins near the LA River and the freeways and train tracks around it, has felt pleasingly anachronistic in my Plein Air Series. Capturing these easily ignored urban areas in paint means focusing intensely on the task at hand, while embracing the conditions of noise, wind, bugs, temperature, and curious people. It’s an antidote to when I need a break from the solitude (which I love) of working in the studio. The Studio Landscape Series are executed from photos I’ve shot on my phone - a digital shortcut, instead of making sketches. The resulting works are deeply connected to my other bodies of work centered on the immediate landscape in my industrial neighborhood of Los Angeles. Different physical elements are swapped in and out, distortions from wide angle iPhone cameras are corrected and colors played with.” ~ J.F.A.

Todd Carpenter continues his examination of how humans perceive and experience landscape paintings and light.

“Each painting is an experiment, investigating the mechanisms that enable landscapes - both real and painted - to have a psychological effect on us. My interest is in what makes certain scenes appealing, and through emphasizing features such as light and depth, I seek to better understand the essence that enables landscape painting to transmit some of the impact of real places. To this end, I paint simplified versions of scenes, distilling realty down to the features that have the greatest meaning. So, these paintings are rendered only in shades of gray, in order to focus on the variations of color value that are essential to realism, and to highlight the manner in which light interacts with subjects. This light is itself often the true subject, so in my paintings I strive to reproduce its tricks, with the hope of conveying some of the atmosphere that it instills in places. Most of these landscapes have been simplified to the extent that they have become nonspecific, having evolved into depictions not of particular places, but rather of their most intriguing features. What remains is just enough realism to create the sense of something real, even while that subject is itself unidentifiable. The depictions thus border on the imaginary, communicating the feel without revealing the actual details.” ~ T.C.

Yumiko Glover’s Cloud Memory Series. 

“In the Cloud Memory series, I translate the shifting architecture of the sky into a slow, tactile language of layers. Each work is constructed through a meticulous process of brushed veils and measured intervals, integrating fragments of hand-cut recycled kimono fabric within acrylic. The palette remains intentionally soft, allowing for subtle shifts in rhythm and light to emerge. This body of work explores the Zen philosophy of impermanence—the understanding that all forms are in a constant state of flux. Developed in the quiet interval between sorrow and care, these paintings are shaped by the gravity of loss yet guided by a profound tenderness. The layered textures suggest the way memories resurface, blur, and reconfigure over time; stones of color hover and edges breathe, inviting the eye to rest within the composition. My practice is rooted in the visual traditions of my upbringing in Hiroshima and shaped by the expansive light of Hawai‘i and California. Now based in Los Angeles, I find the city’s layered cultures and atmosphere continually informing my work. I aim to create a space for reflection—a place where the empty space and the interval receive what is unspoken. In this stillness, what has been lost and what remains find a point of convergence. Cloud Memory is both an offering and a practice: a steady tending to the canvas that allows change to breathe and renewal to take form.” ~ Y.G.

Mary Lai’s paintings draw from her experiences, memories and imagination.

“I create artworks that relate to identity and the world that surrounds me. These modern landscapes full of texture and color draws the viewer closer to have a conversation about the subject. The narratives in the artworks shape shift and can go from joy to melancholy or from reality to a dream state. The purpose of these vibrant mixed media artworks aims to uplift but ultimately evoke emotions through taking the viewer on a journey.” ~ M.L.