Palos Verdes Art Center in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., will show Agarrar Monte, new landscapes by Paloma Menéndez that redefine contemporary plein air painting, from Jan. 12 to Feb. 24, 2019. The artist will be present at the opening reception, to be held 6 - 9pm, January 12 at PVAC.

"From land art to conceptual art, a large number of artists have created their work through the act of walking. We hit the road, try to take the daily act of walking as a means to draw, acting as an explorer to document nature, or examine the vestiges of the past through drawing. 

Agarrar Monte is a travel diary, record, document, and translation of my walks to the mountain through painting. 

I 'grasp the mountain' to experience a direct contact with nature, and develop my artistic practice from the understanding of the landscape, as a mode of representation, based more on the body - and its relation to space and time - than on the mind," explains Paloma Menéndez 

Paloma Menéndez is an artist and educator whose work explores space and place through painting and drawing, conveying the geographical features of landscape as well as alternative ones derived from her imagination. She finds inspiration in nature as well as in an image bank of photographs, art books, and the internet. Born in Mexico City, she attended La Esmeralda from 1985 to1990. Her work has been shown in Mexico, United States, Germany, Austria, and France. From 2009 she has held a faculty position at Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatán. She lives and works in Mérida, Yucatán since 2000.