Olivia Edith
L.A. Desert Heart

"L.A. Desert Heart" is a painting from a two-person show entitled "Love and Lockets: Portraits from The City of Roses and The City of Angels." I created a story, mixing together elements of personal symbolism and metaphor while evoking the beauty, struggles and strength of young females growing up in Los Angeles urban culture. The works in this show were based on fictional and non-fictional characters, influenced by my own personal history growing up while witnessing frequent gang violence in my formative public school education in Pennsylvania. My public school system, complete with metal detectors and "green police," encouraged "family" warfare by forcing attendance from opposing neighborhoods at the one school. Triggered by the realities of poverty and glamorized lifestyles in the media, gangs offered a family life that can be deceptively disguised as "stable."

I strung the composition in "L.A. Desert Heart" together with my favorite animal, the lizard. Lizards are quick and sharp, can camouflage themselves, and wait patiently to strike. Growing up inside city life as a female you have to be tough on the outside and possess a spiritual, emotional, and mental armor that allows you to face your internal fears as well. Girls and lizards move through the world in a constant state of rejuvenation, staying deeply connected to intuition.

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