005 → Picking Flowers in Monte Del Lago, Caylah Jean Leas
Press Release + Artist Bio
Press Release and Artist Bio for the first solo exhibition of Californian artist Caylah Jean Leas in Monterey, California. The entire text is included in promotional materials for both the exhibition and digital communications.
Picking Flowers in Monte Del Lago
Press Release
Caylah Jean Leas’ first solo show “Picking Flowers in Monte Del Lago”, brings forth her work of portraits and scenic landscapes that explore the complexities of life in small towns, mobile home communities, and nostalgic Americana. Her bubbly and abundant color choices capture the warmth and resilience of these often-overlooked spaces and the people who encapsulate them—a love letter to the Central California coast. Being raised in the mobile home community, Caylah uses this home module to represent the fragility of human nature and the delicate lives we continue to cultivate. Though some of the paintings, such as Salinas Valley, 2021, are heavy on the architectural landscape, they visually take the form of a portrait— its rolling hills to the boundless skies shape a silver lining to her artwork. Despite Earth’s difficulties, beauty can still be found.
By capturing a bit of lightness within the somberness, Caylah’s nostalgic snapshots evoke familiar memories. In “Paradise is Nice (2021),” the angle of the house siding resting behind a bed of pastel-painted florals kindles the craving for a home, rosy hues bringing on the smell of your favorite scent from the kitchen. The surrealist still-life portraits of lush fresh produce provide active movement through warped angles and distorted blending. Contrasted by “Quality You Can Taste, 2021,” where the bold color choices represent the overprescribed food culture and the health of America. Her technique brings impactful outreach to the lives within these communities and the power of their often unheard stories.
Caylah’s work often depicts two sides or two extremes. In “The Same Moon That Looks Down On You Is Watching Over Me (2022),” each side has a different outcome or landscape. The left side brings the vastness of the land while the right side alludes to a more industrial choice; the title exclaims that no matter the distance between two things, they remain in the same atmosphere, under the same sky. Caylah’s perspective explores the delightful contrast between dismissal and shining beauty. She includes the observer in each duality while also shifting their mindset towards appreciation of the mundane. Playing with the everyday objects with more seasonal ones—a plastic grocery bag painted with a grin lackadaisically sits next to the Californian native, Birds of Paradise, in “You’ll never know what these Venetian blinds could mean to me (2021).” Both shine bright through the silhouette of the Venetian blinds, the symbiotic relationship between home and paradise.
Caylah's translucent attention to detail and blended explorations showcase the complexity of the human experience. Picking Flowers In Monte Del Lago is a tribute to the enduring strength and purity of the human spirit.
Caylah Jean Leas
Artist Bio
Caylah Jean Leas, a Monterey Bay native, is a self-taught painter who focuses on oil painting as a medium. Her painted works range from 8x8” to 48x64”. In 2011, she relocated to New York City and began work as a set designer. With set design, she brought her eye for art to the physical space through production styling and crafting intriguing color palettes. Oftentimes, these techniques also take form in her paintings. During the 2020 lockdown, she discovered her passion for painting in her Brooklyn apartment and started her artistic journey.
Her paintings focus on portraiture, depicting the diverse community of outsider artists she encounters in New York City and exploring vignettes from her childhood mobile home park on the Central Coast of California. Her style incorporates bold color choices, expressive yet subtle brushstrokes, and emotive representations of human and inanimate subjects.
Caylah Jean Leas Website