Calida Rawles

Calida Rawles paints Black women suspended in water — bodies drifting, hair coiling, the surface tension of a swimming pool rendered with photoreal patience. The work pulls together two histories that don’t usually share a frame: classical figure painting, and the long American memory of swimming as a contested space.

The figures are at ease. The water holds them. Underneath, a quieter argument keeps moving — about who gets to be still, who gets to be looked at as art, who gets to occupy the meditative middle of a canvas without a story being asked of them.

She lives and works in Los Angeles, exhibits with Lehmann Maupin and Various Small Fires, and teaches when she’s between shows.