Ruscha

Ideas often come to Ruscha on the road, whether driving on the congested freeways of Los Angeles or across the expansive mountains and deserts of Southern California. Drawing inspiration from this varied geography, Ruscha introduced new motifs in relation to familiar themes in his work from the last two and a half decades. For instance, soaring, snow-capped peaks emerge in the backgrounds of his word paintings-a novel take on his ongoing preoccupation with language and landscape. Ruscha has also meticulously represented cast-off debris and roadside markers in works that meditate on the passage of time through their depictions of accumulation. and decay. "I have always operated on a kind of waste- retrieval method," he has said. "I retrieve and renew things that have been forgotten or wasted." More than mere description of his subject matter, this statement captures the ways certain ideas have been revisited and reimagined by Ruscha across his six-decade career.