Paintings of California Landscapes & Mobile Home Life.
Los Angeles native, Marisa Murrow paints the visual information she discovers onsite to produce distinctive portraits of Mobile Home parks, swimming pools, flowers and abstractions. — The mobile home parks along the California coast are often absent from the romantic imagery that defines the shoreline, yet they are essential to its lived reality. My paintings place these communities at the center of the California landscape, exploring them as vibrant cultural ecosystems shaped by resilience, care, and adaptation.
I am drawn to the rhythms of these environments—the repetition of rooflines, fences, palm shadows, and narrow streets—and the stories they contain. These communities reflect multigenerational histories, migration, and working-class life that are rarely represented in coastal imagery. They also embody sustainability in both ecological and social terms: compact, resourceful forms of living sustained by strong networks of mutual support.
My practice is rooted in long-term observation. By returning to the same sites over time, I build relationships rather than simply document places. This sustained attention allows memory, atmosphere, and lived experience to emerge within the work.
Through painting, I seek to challenge traditional hierarchies of landscape representation by treating working-class coastal communities with the same aesthetic seriousness historically reserved for more celebrated subjects. The work asks viewers to reconsider what is considered beautiful, valuable, and worthy of attention.
Ultimately, these paintings are about looking closely. They explore how place shapes identity and how careful observation can reveal cultural meaning in landscapes often overlooked or marginalized.
Come slip into the California sunshine.
Available to work on commission.
Marisa Murrow is a graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design.
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