Anyone who’s ever driven down the coastal 101 Highway, or traversed the Coronado Bay Bridge when the light is just so, can appreciate the optic of J Paxton’s photographic repertoire. In the tradition of the masters of the California vernacular – Ruscha, Baldessari, Diebenkorn, and Hockney – Paxton has a knack for transforming the everyday site of palm trees, skyscrapers, and Pacific swells into a veritable epiphany.

Paxton’s kaleidoscopic spectrum can evoke the damp cool of twilight or the dry heat of Santa Ana winds like a thermochromic imprint of the found landscape. His digital layers are a reimagining of the automobile lacquers, resins, and synthetic pigments that first put California on the map with the chemical colors and licked textures of Finish Fetish.