Culture Type
Forthcoming: Pérez Art Museum Miami is presenting First Solo Museum Exhibition of calida Rawles, her poetic water Portraits Blend Hyperrealism and absraction
“Water and its many themes, characteristics, and metaphors is central to the practice of Calida Rawles and serves as an anchoring through line in her paintings.”
Colossal
In Calida Rawles’ New Paintings, the Next Generation Transcends Darkness
“Tufts of a pink skirt, a soaked evening gown clinging to a knee, and a few fingers and toes gently breach the water’s surface in Calida Rawles’ A Certain Oblivion”
Vanity Fair
A Dystopian Thriller, Political Deep Dives, and More Books to Read in November
“A taster plate of new novels, nonfiction, and the book inspiring artist Calida Rawles.”
Cultured
Calida Rawles’s Final White Dress Offers the Grace and Buoyancy We So Desperately Need
“Twenty-five years after graduating from Spelman College, the painter returns to her alma mater to ignite a new generation of artists with Thy Name We Praise, a new work in “Black American Portraits,” which opens today.”
artillery
Fire and Water: The Beautiful Tragedies of Calida Rawles
“In 2004 Calida Rawles moved from New York to Los Angeles, and she found an art scene brimming with life. Trained as an artist, she longed to become part of that world, and asked herself whether she would become a collector or a painter. She decided ….”
artnet
Music Legend Lionel Richie Bought a Trio of Works by Calida Rawles About the Overturning of Roe v. Wade at Frieze London
“The musician Lionel Richie made an early purchase at the Frieze art fair in London: a trio of luminous, hyper-realistic pastel works on paper by Calida Rawles at Lehmann Maupin’s booth.”
The Art Newspaper
Calida Rawles’s mural makes waves at Inglewood's new SoFi Stadium
“The regal painting of a Black woman floating happily in a swirl of water was finished just in time for Los Angeles Rams Super Bowl win on Sunday”
cero
The Paintings of Calida Rawles Offer a Space for Healing and Self-Reflection
“The works that Calida Rawles debuted at Lehmann Maupin in September—in her first New York solo exhibition and first presentation since Covid-19 swept through the art world—could perhaps be described as "pandemic paintings."”
artnet
Roxane Gay on How Artist Calida Garcia Rawles Shows Us a New and More humane, Way of Bearing Witness." Artnet News. October 13.
“The writer explores the significance Rawles's painting "High Tide, Heavy Armor."”
Financial times
Calida Rawles: ‘I use soft colours people wouldn’t associate with black men’
“I’ve never walked in the shoes of a black man. I don’t know what it’s like to be a black man. And [despite a love of and relationship with black men] I wanted to start with my experience of not being able to have that fuller understanding.”
Bazaar
Calida Rawles, Amy Sherald, and Ta-Nehisi Coates Find Freedom in Belonging
The painter, the portraitist, and the author, who are all friends from their college years, sat down for an intimate conversation about making art right now.
the new york times style magazine
Beneath the Water’s Surface, a Moment of Repose
Calida Rawles talks about creating this portrait, which is by turns photo-realistic and impressionistic, and for her evokes a sense of peace.
artnews
Calida Rawles’s Ethereal Paintings of Water Push the Boundaries of Portraiture
In Calida Rawles’ world, Black bodies rise through sunlight and waves. The Los Angeles–based artist has earned widespread recognition for her exacting, ethereal depictions of water. Fittingly, Rawles’s work appeared on the cover of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s…
artnet
los angeles-based artist calida rawles on painting black bodies in water and the impact of her work
Well aware of the historically negative connotations of water as a site of exclusion for Black people, Calida Rawles’ photorealistic paintings of Black men, women and children in water address difficult issues of contemporary Black life…
artnet
‘We’re Coming Out From Under’: Rising-Star Artist Calida Rawles on How Her Transfixing Water Paintings Address a Year of Mourning
When I called Calida Rawles to do this interview, it was with a rare and welcome amount of familiarity. We had spoken already a few times times this year….
artnet
Here Are 25 Inspiring Women in the Art World Who Overcame Obstacles to Accomplish Incredible Things in This Surreal Year
It has been an unpredictable year for us all. Faced with having to adapt to new challenges, we have each had to come up with new ways of interacting, coping, growing, and understanding the world. And perhaps the biggest lesson of the year is how deeply interconnected our lives really are…
ny times
How Three Artists Are Exploring Mythology and Race
In re-examining historical narratives and classical stories, these artists are creating images that speak on multiple levels to the experiences of being Black and female.
juxtapoz
A Dream for My Lilith was 2020’s most talked-about West Coast exhibition, the first solo show for Calida Rawles, whose work took multiple forms until an enlightening deep dive. Water arose as a metaphor for life, death, the ubiquitous unknown, and the universe, and she’s only just begun this exploration.
colossal
Five years ago, Calida Garcia Rawles learned to swim by joining a team dedicated to the exercise. The sessions were “therapeutic and spiritually uplifting,” the Los Angeles-based artist shares with Colossal. “I found that I felt emotionally lighter after leaving the pool, …
art net news
A New Show in Seoul Brings Together Artistic Depictions of Chosen Family by Gina Beavers, Diedrick Brackens, and Others—See It Here
la weekly
Art at its best is not always only about the artist’s own self-expression, as powerful as that is. Sometimes the power comes from the artist’s gift for expressing that self on behalf of the culture, and reflecting us back to ourselves at a higher level of insight….
KCRW
Sometimes it feels like art can’t make concrete change during social unrest. But this week I’m featuring stories of artists, galleries, and curators who are finding unique ways to collect donations from the art community.
la weekly
Painter Calida Rawles has found her groove. For years experimenting with portraits of mainly female figures swimming, floating and submerged in water, Rawles explores aspects of historical and symbolic terrain having to do with beauty, power, race, spirituality and the psychological scars of history. What began from a foundation of deeply personal lived experience expanded to denote a range of …
w
There’s nothing quite like the quiet of being underwater. The hubbub of the world becomes a pulsating hush, something in between silence and sound—almost like hearing the rhythms of our own bodies amplified. The artist Calida Rawles, 43, discovered this sensation and the sense of peace that comes with it when she started swimming laps for exercise seven years ago. She also discovered something else: an important subject for her work.
the cut
“The body has memory,” writes Claudia Rankine in Citizen. “The physical carriage hauls more than its weight.” This line struck Los Angeles–based artist Calida Rawles as she created a series of photo-realistic paintings of black figures immersed in scintillating, sunlit water.
cultured
“It was about five years ago when water entered my life,” says Los Angeles-based painter Calida Rawles. Pregnant with her third daughter, she began swimming. “It started as exercise, and then it became almost like a therapy. I learned how to really swim as an adult. My breathing became more meditative. I felt so much better in the water.”
new york times
Ta-Nehisi Coates’s first novel, “The Water Dancer,” will be published in September by One World, an imprint of Random House, and now, it has a cover. The image, painted by the artist Calida Garcia Rawles, depicts a black man submerged in water, a reflection of both a plot point in the book as well as Rawles’ previous work, in which she said she’s combined the “meditative” quality of water to reckon with black trauma.