American Airlines Passenger Ticket 1 (after Warhol) (2023), oil on canvas, 32 x 59 inchesParadise and Precarity Merge in Jessica Bellamys Paintings of Los Angeles LifeFebruary 7, 2025ArtClimateKate MothesFor Jessica Taylor Bellamy, juxtapositions, transparency, and layers shape a way of working that evokes her family history and notions of home and landscape. Born to an Ashkenazi Jewish mother and an Afro-Cuban Jamaican father, Bellamy was raised in Whittier, just southeast of Los Angeles. In glowing oil paintings, she draws from personal mementos like photographs, sales receipts, and newspaper clippings to explore the relationships between utopia and dystopia, humans and nature, image and text, and fantasy and reality.Did She Nail It? (2025), oil on canvas, 26 x 20 inchesBellamy portrays sunsets, landscapes, trees, urban streets, flora, animals, and cloud formations in a kind of dreamy washiness, adding patterns like chainlink fences, gates, and lace curtains suggestive of boundaries. Horizontal landscapes overlaid with American Airlines tickets echo Andy Warhols 1960s silkscreen prints of SAS airline tickets merged with floral motifs.Bellamys observations are rooted in her experiences of the sprawling urban landscape of Los Angelesa meeting of nature and civilization at the edge of a precarious paradise, formed by fire, drought, flood, and wind, says a statement from Anat Ebgi, which represents the artist and opens her new solo exhibition, Temperature Check.A few works shown here, like Did She Nail It?, appear in the show, which merges landscapes and atmospheric lighting effects with references to DIY culture, whats gendered as mens work, and car and motorcycle culture. The Home Depot receipt, which typically uses the slogan Did we nail it?, is combined with an image of a rear-view mirror depicted so close that it initially appears abstract.Bellamy examines the dualities and precarity of life in Southern Californiaa seeming paradise weve witnessed can be swiftly devastated by fire and drought. The title Temperature Change is also a double entendre, suggesting meteorological readings and a figurative expression used when measuring a group mood or opinion. Through surreal imagery and echoes of mass production and consumerism, the artist invokes a noir reverie.Temperature Check runs from February 8 to March 22 in Los Angeles. Find more on the artists website and Instagram.Box Fan (AM) (2025), oil on canvas, 57 1/2 x 32 inchesAmerican Airlines Passenger Ticket 2 (after Warhol) (2023), oil on canvas, 32 x 60 inchesPlaya Larga (Coquina Combination Pill Pack) (2023), oil on canvas, 23 3/4 x 42 1/2 inchesA Subspecies of Journalism (2023), oil on canvas, 59 x 43 1/2 inchesA Splendid Paradox (2022), oil on canvas, 70 x 52 inchesCurtain of Sky (2024), oil on canvas, 57 1/2 x 48 inchesHorizontal Thrust I (Blue graffiti highway) (2025), oil on canvas, 26 x 70 inchesDriveway Moment (2025), oil on canvas, 57 1/2 x 47 inchesNext article