Bio
Todd Carpenter uses black and white paint to examine the capacity of landscape paintings to convey the the sense of places. He holds a MS in Neuroscience and a BS in Psychobiology, and brings this background into service when making art. His paintings explore the mechanisms of perception and aesthetics, probing the relationships between humans and our environment by examining concepts such as how the depiction of light can impart realism and mood. Before becoming a full-time artist Carpenter worked in the sciences, and in the past has taught neuroscience, environmental science, and photography. He currently teaches painting through the community education program at Santa Monica College. He is based in southern California.
Solo Exhibitions
2025 Niches of the mind, LAUNCH Gallery, Los Angeles, CA2025 Through Shadows, OUAF Gallery, Solana Beach, CA
2022 Concentrations, LAUNCH Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2020 When dreams absolve daylight, KP Projects, Los Angeles, CA
2020 There That May Yet Be, Abend Gallery, Denver, CO
2019 Traces, KP Projects, Los Angeles, CA
2019 Light of A Parallel Plane, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX
2018 For the Trees, the Forest, The Blue Azul Collection, San Diego, CA
2018 In the Spaces Between, KP Projects, Los Angeles, CA
2017 Mysmemorphia, The Blue Azul Collection, San Diego, CA
2017 Shadow Discarnate, KP Projects, Los Angeles, CA
2016 Sky Without Angels or Stars, KP Projects, Los Angeles, CA
2015 Carbon, KP Projects, Los Angeles, CA
2014 Inseparate, Merry Karnowsky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2013 Speculations, Merry Karnowsky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2012 Grey, LAUNCH, Los Angeles, CA
2012 GaGa Gallery, Insa-dong, Seoul, Korea
2012 MayJune Gallery, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Korea
2011 Specifically Ambiguous, LAUNCH, Los Angeles, CA
2010 Scaped, LAUNCH, Los Angeles, CA
2009 Observations, Lawrence Asher Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2008 Black-and-White Paintings and Color Photographs, Four Walls, San Diego, CA
2006 A Travel Log of Fireflies, Four Walls, San Diego, CA
2005 Pattern and Contrast, Four Walls, San Diego, CA
Group Exhibitions
2024 Made of Stars, KP Projects, Los Angeles, CA2024 34th Annual Holiday Miniatures Show, Abend Gallery, Denver, CO
2024 Slice of Summer, KP Projects, Los Angeles, CA
2023 33rd Annual Holiday Miniatures Show, Abend Gallery, Denver, CO
2023 New Landscapes, Launch Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2022 32nd Annual Mini Show, Abend Gallery, Denver, CO
2021 Holiday Miniatures Show, Abend Gallery, Denver, CO
2020 Group Show 2020, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX
2019 LA Flora, Launch LA, Los Angeles, CA
2019 Designercon, with KP Projects, Anaheim, CA
2019 Jackson Hole Fine Art Fair, with Abend Gallery, Jackson Hole, WY
2019 Horizons, Abend Gallery, Denver, CO
2019 Group Show, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX
2018 5x5 Project III, Abend Gallery, Denver, CO
2018 Group Show 2018, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX
2018 The 10x10 Exhibition, Abend Gallery, Denver, CO
2018 The LA Art Show, with KP Projects, Los Angeles, CA
2017 Annual Group Exhibition, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX
2017 Palm Springs Modernism, with the Blue Azul Collection, Palm Springs, CA
2016 All That Glitters, KP Projects Chinatown, Los Angeles, CA
2016 Final MAS Attack, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA
2016 Art San Diego, with the Blue Azul Collection, San Diego, CA
2016 Seoul Art Show, with CK Artspace, Seoul, Korea
2016 Asia Contemporary, with CK Artspace, Hong Kong
2016 Seoul Open Art Fair, with CK Artspace, Seoul, Korea
2016 MAS Attack, San Diego, CA
2015 Annual Group Show, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX
2015 California Light, Sturt Haaga Gallery, La Cañada Flintridge, CA
2014 Praeteritum, Nunc, Futurum, KP PROJECTS / MKG, Los Angeles, CA
2014 Small Things, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX
2014 Group Show, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX
2014 A Rare Glimpse, City of Brea Art Gallery, Brea, CA
2014 Silicon Valley Contemporary, with Merry Karnowsky Gallery, San Jose, CA
2014 LA Art Show, with LAUNCH, Los Angeles, CA
2013 Group Show, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX
2013 Fountain Art Fair, with CK Art Space, New York, NY
2013 Palm Springs Fine Art Fair, with LAUNCH, Palm Springs, CA
2013 Beyond Plots, NSA&D Faculty Show, San Diego, CA
2013 Worlds Apart Fair, with Charlie K. Art Space, Singapore
2013 LA Art Show, with LAUNCH, Los Angeles, CA
2012 Vale Fine Art, Paso Robles, CA
2012 Tarfest, Juried by Holly Harrison of LACMA, Los Angeles, CA
2012 ArtPad SF, with LAUNCH, San Francisco, CA
2012 Hong Kong Contemporary, with Charlie K Artspace, Hong Kong
2012 Seoul Open Art Fair, Seoul, Korea
2012 LA Art Show, Modern and Contemporary, with LAUNCH, Los Angeles, CA
2011 MK2 Projects, Los Angeles, CA
2011 ArtPad SF, with LAUNCH, San Francisco, CA
2010 Tarfest, Juried by Edward Robinson of LACMA, Los Angeles, CA
2010 Los Angeles Juried Exhibition, Los Angeles Municipal Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2009 Context and Construct, Lawrence Asher Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2008 Aboutness, SB London, Los Angeles, CA
2007 Juried Group Show, District 117, San Diego, CA
2006 Stephen Beck Gallery, Santa Ana, CA
2006 Monarch Fine Art, La Jolla, CA
2006 Gifted, Four Walls, San Diego, CA
2006 Adorn, San Diego, CA
2006 Truck Show, Thread, San Diego, CA
2006 Space, San Diego, CA
2005 Adorn, San Diego, CA
2004 Adorn, San Diego, CA
Education
MS Neuroscience, University of California, San DiegoBS Psychobiology, University of California, Los Angeles
Press
Art and Cake, "Todd Carpenter at KP Projects", July 2018.ArtScene, "Continuing and Recommended", May 2017.
Diversions LA, "KP Projects Dazzles", August 2016.
Artsy, "There Is No Los Angeles: Todd Carpenter Grays Out L.A. for His New Solo Show", July 2016.
Section 8 Magazine, "Todd Carpenter - Sky Without Angels or Stars & Vonn Sumner - To Be Seen", July 2016.
Los Angeles Times, "Todd Carpenter on art, neuroscience and seeing the light", August 2015.
WideWalls, "Deedee Cheriel and Todd Carpenter On Show at Merry Karnowsky", August 2015.
Hi Fructose, "Opening Night: Edward Walton Wilcox and Todd Carpenter at Merry Karnowsky Gallery", June 2014.
New Times SLO, "Anatomy on Acid", February 2012.
FABRIK, "Todd Carpenter, Painter of Light", December 2010.
Off-Ramp, interview with John Rabe on SCPR, November 2010.
ArtScene, "Continuing and Recommended," July/August 2008, p.28.
San Diego Visual Arts Network, "Raw: Out and About at the Galleries," June 2008.
California Home & Design, "The Light Touch," May 2008, p. 68.
San Diego City Beat, May 28, 2008, p.19.
San Diego City Beat, "Preview," November 2006.
La Jolla Village News, "Talk of the Walk, Galleries Pour It On," October 5, 2006.
University Heights News, "March Exhibition at Space," March 2006.
San Diego Architecture Downtown guidebook, cover photograph, 2005.
Artist Statements:
Niches of the mind, February 2025:
What is our place? Each species has its niche, the set of environmental variables by which their place in the ecosystem is defined. These are features such as latitude and elevation, temperature and moisture, salinity and soil type, and other variables within which - in a sense – a species is confined.But humans – we who do the defining - are not confined by the variables, so what defines us? We see ourselves as being free, untamed by the constraints of biology. We are not in a niche that is restrictive, not in the way it is for the other creatures. Humans can thrive virtually anywhere, eating everything that has not yet figured out how to make itself poisonous enough to keep our teeth away. When we move about we can carry our resources, and we can make our home in any climate, with walls and insulation to keep out natural forces. Not even the rats, roaches, or raccoons are as adaptable as me and you. We are so clever that even as we undermine the health of our ecosystems we continue to prosper, though probably not forever.
It is almost as if we are without a biological niche, which would make us an aberration, a species that doesn’t fit. An animal’s niche defines as it confines, so if we are unconfined and free, are we also undefined, as if fallen from the branches of taxonomy? It is as if we have lost our place in the ecosystem. Do we recall that we are animals at all? Do we think instead that we are machines, even as we build other machines with which we fear we cannot compete? And yet, as far as we are aware, computers don’t know what it feels like to be somewhere.
It is our minds that make us different from other animals. The big brains that break us free from the environmental variables that restrict other species, yet these brains are specimens of biology, and therefore unable to escape the bonds of ecology. Connections remain, following us like shadows, ghosts from our history that accentuate the light of what it is like to be human, outlining the form of our existence. And of these shadows, the most haunting is our relationship to places. Our perception of space, carried by axons anchored in the most ancient areas of the visual system, connects us to our biological selves. And this connection goes beyond mere visual perception, for places are bound up with memory and emotion, and have the capacity to evoke feelings of fear or safety, awe, beauty and novelty. Places can impact us in a way that feels ancient and primitive.
Perhaps this vague connection to landscapes is what remains of our niche, like a shrine to our biology, sheltered in the corner of our minds. We carry this niche with us: we can inhabit almost any possible habitat but everywhere we go we engage our relationship to place.
My paintings attempt to capture this unconscious connection between humans and places. In particular, I focus on the features that are most effective at conveying the feel of a landscape, and to this end I break scenes down, dissecting them to find the essential organs that give life to land. The subjects become simplified, reduced to the factors that appeal to our genes, as I search for the features that are most intriguing. I concentrate on characteristics such as the subtle shadings of light, the fragments of perspective we don’t consciously see, or the angle of the lines under our feet, as I strive to paint distillations of light and atmosphere, and condensates of shadow, awe, and fear.
Light itself is often the principle subject of my paintings, for frequently it is light that tells us about the dimensionality of a place, while at the same time light is what makes a scene evocative, infusing even the mundane with feeling. It imparts places with atmosphere and intrigue, watering the seeds of our memory with vagaries of shadow that imbue a view with mystery.
In simplifying, I mostly lose the details that might specify a specific view, for these paintings are designed to evoke the lands that are lost inside our past. But this does not mean that I paint ancient ecosystems. The scenes I depict are of many different types, not necessarily natural, just as they are rarely factual, because a fictional factory might be possessed by the same inspiring light as an untouched forest.
These paintings focus on the overall impact of landscapes rather than the details of their component parts. What matters most is not the rocks or trees or things in the environment that beasts are compelled to eat. What I wish to portray instead is the volume of space that these things surround, the vacant air with its depth sketched out by the lines on the ground. For the essence of a landscape is the space - the thing that isn't there - that matches the landscape in our imagination that we carry everywhere. I don’t paint the definite, because we are defined by the thing that doesn’t exist. This is our negative space, the surrounding that outlines what it is to be human.
My paintings thus examine our attachment to our surroundings, attempting to capture the ability of landscapes to evoke something in our sense of being. They are about place: not particular places, but the more generic idea of place, the place in our ancient past that our minds are searching for. I am trying to depict our niche, our sense of the world as it relates to our sense of self, the unconscious link between the mind and the environment. These are the brains hidden scenes, forgotten by us but remembered in our genes.
Concentrations, November 2022:
These paintings are concentrations: reductions of reality, attempts to extract the essence of what it is like to experience landscapes.The real world presents our senses with uncountable detail, constantly saturating us with stimuli. A view of a forest, for example, might include the lines of millions of leaves, colored in infinite shades of grayish green. There are also branches and birds, and shadows and dirt, plus all the other forest parts, each made up of even smaller parts. Nonetheless the viewer, inundated with this multitude of detail, might for a moment be aware of just a single concept: a forest. Our awareness of a forest, or a tree or a mountain, is singular and unified, separate from thoughts of the individual details. Thinking of a forest does not entail thinking of leaves.
Then how is it that we are able to recognize a forest or a mountain? Not through any particular detail, because no one detail is essential. The number of combinations of parts that look like a mountain is infinite. The critical characteristics might be more subtle and structural, a foundation that is common to all mountains, concealed beneath the facade of the particulars.
With these paintings, I attempt to examine the features that characterize landscapes. The depicted scenes are simplified to emphasize components that are instrumental in invoking their subject, components such as texture and pattern, gradients and shading, or even the angles of lines. These are the characteristics that might cause the infinite parts to settle into a single idea. With these paintings I am looking for the essence that condenses the details into something singular.
Ultimately the unifying element is the viewer: the infinitesimal point at the center of the sphere of perception. The viewer's mind makes the parts of the scene resolve into something meaningful. These paintings merely concentrate on those traits that will help the mind to imagine. Thus these paintings are concentrations.
Light of a Parallel Plane, January 2019:
With this series I continue to explore how the depiction of light can convey the feel of a landscape. The paintings in this exhibition are generally not representations of particular places or of the individual elements that comprise them, but rather attempts to capture what it might be like to experience those places.In order to convey the sense of a landscape, I strive for a certain aspect of realism, though it is an inaccurate realism, negligent of proper detail while intent on features that give a painting depth. I am trying to depict dimension, to enable the viewer to imagine being in the real scene, and one reason why I paint in black and white is that it is suited for this portrayal of depth. Black and white make dark and light, the shadow and shading that define dimensionality. The brain uses features such as contrast and gradients - the details of illumination - to determine what is close or far, or round or sharp, and does so without the use of color. Color hue is useful for distinguishing particular things, but black and white is all we require to understand shapes and spatial arrangements. By painting in monochrome, I am focusing on the ways in which light imparts depth and realism to a landscape.
Through the shadows and haze that tell us about a space, light also carries the mood of the place, and it is this that I ultimately try to convey. I want to capture in paint the solitary glint, breaking through at the limits of a view to remind us of the distance that separates us from civilization; or to make record of a shadow, lingering secretly in the shade, as dim proof of the limitless depth of darkness. I want to paint a scene nearly recognized from a forgotten dream, or the invisible atmosphere that hangs above the aura of the imagined. These paintings are places to direct emotion, backdrops to an unrecognizable play, and stages onto which to walk fantasies and fears.
In pursuit of the the feel of landscapes, I find myself moving increasingly towards the surreal nature that sometime arises unexpectedly from my emphasis on light. Consequentially, though these works still wear traces of the particulars that inspired them, and their atmospheres are accented with the breath of cities and forests encountered on travels abroad, ultimately they portray places more foreign than merely being overseas. They are shadows traced by a different light, one with rays running parallel to that which we know as real.
Carbon, 2015:
As a painter, I am particularly interested in the depiction of light, and in the ways in which light contributes to our experience of paintings.As with any visual art, painting obviously has an essential dependence on light, but there are other, more specific ways in which light is important for paintings. In particular, the depiction of light is crucial for realism. Realism in paintings presumably arises from the accurate portrayal of depth: to see a painting as realistic means to see its subject as existing in more than just the two dimensions of the picture plane. There are several mechanisms by which humans perceive depth, one of which being the detection of lighting cues. The behavior of light in space, generating features such as variations in shading and contrast, tells us about the three-dimensional arrangement of our surroundings. Artists have long used the depiction of these illumination phenomena to impart realism to depicted scenes.
Another manner in which light contributes to paintings is through its ability to impact emotion. The lighting of our surroundings can evoke human emotion, as clearly evidenced by the influences sunsets, candlelight, and darkness can have on us. Effects such as these suggest that our perception of light might be connected to primitive instincts, with light possibly signaling environmental variables - such as shelter, nightfall, or warmth - that were once crucial for survival. The depiction of certain lighting conditions in a painting might have a similar ability to modulate the perceived significance of the represented scene and thus contribute to the emotional impact of the painting.
One reason why I paint in grayscale is that it is suited for the portrayal of light. The lighting features our brains rely on for the perception of depth are apparently built primarily on tone rather than hue. This idea is supported by research in neuroscience that suggests that the areas of the visual system that process spatial relationships are to some degree distinct from areas that encode the colors and details used to delineate specific objects. By painting in grayscale I am attempting to interact with this part of our visual system, with the hope of imparting a degree of realism, and perhaps also conveying some of the emotional significance that light can imbue on places.
It is through light that we see the world, but light itself is also seen, with an impact independent of the objects that project it. Light is both the crisp contrast of a back-lit forest and the gray haze of an industrial landscape, its perceptual power being what transmits the distinct atmospheres of such scenes to the viewer. This ability of light to effect us is the connection between the diverse subjects depicted in my paintings.
The title of this exhibition refers to another commonality shared across its varied subject matter: the chemical element that is both the foundation for the ecosystems of this planet and an agent for our harm to those ecosystems, and which is also the essence of the black pigment used for these paintings. In keeping with this chemistry, the titles of the individual paintings are based on the names of organic molecules that naturally occur in certain plants. Being organic according to the technical use of the term, these molecules - not unlike the paintings they name - are built from a skeleton of carbon.
Contact:
619-208-2687 todd@monochromart.com