Angela Lane, “Phase Shift”

by David S. Rubin

Anat Ebgi Gallery, Los Angeles

Continuing through July 18, 2026

Angela Lane, “Burning Sky,” 2025, oil on birch plywood, 10 x 7”. All images courtesy of Anat Ebgi Gallery, Los Angeles.

All images courtesy of Anat Ebgi Gallery.

In “Phase Shift,” an exhibition of eighteen gemlike, delicately executed small scale oil paintings, Angela Lane investigates meteorological phenomena such as solar eclipses, Northern Lights (aurora borealis), twin suns, and mirrored moons. All of these celestial events are accompanied by bucolic landscape settings depicted in an Old Master style that resembles the misty sfumato atmospheres of Leonardo da Vinci and the serene pastures of Claude Lorrain, but without the solitude. The expansive skies in some, in fact, are rendered in shades of acidic pink that call attention to the increasing aberrations in weather that characterize global warming.

At the same time, all are dominated by the luminosity of radiant light beams or glowing halos behind darkened suns that are so intense that they take on a psychedelic or supernatural dimension.

Angela Lane, “Firefall,” 2026, oil on birch plywood, 10 x 7”.

In that respect, Lane is working within a tradition that includes William Blake, Caspar David Friedrich, William Pinkham Ryder, Maxfield Parrish, Arthur Dove, Georgia O’Keeffe, and many others who have attempted to capture in paint the connection between nature and spiritual consciousness. Recently, Lane has been posting images of such work, mostly by unknown artists rather than established masters, on her Instagram page.

Although the artist has stated that she is interested in ambiguities of how we perceive and interpret what we see, paintings such as “Burning Sky” (2025) and “Firefall” (2026) are downright apocalyptic. The flame that hovers in the sky above the quiet landscape in the former, while never making contact with the terrain, infuses the clouds with pinkish tones that will remind Angelenos of the atmospheric discolorations we witnessed firsthand during the devastating fires of 2025. A similarly terse palette fills almost the entire composition of “Firefall,” where a solar eclipse appears to be triggering a fiery rift in the landscape below. The central imagery here also bears a striking resemblance to the moon reflecting light on water in Edvard Munch’s well known “Moonlight” (1895).

Angela Lane, “Hyperspectral Vision,” 2025, oil on birch plywood, 10 x 7”.

The majority of Lane’s paintings feel anticipatory and hopeful, with most of the celestial orbs appearing as sources of seemingly magical energy. “Hyperspectral Vision” (2026), for example, depicts a fusion of a landscape with a sundog, an optical illusion that occurs when the refraction of sunlight by ice crystals in the atmosphere results in the appearance of a halo. Rather than taking place in the sky, where it naturally occurs, Lane has transformed the phenomenological event into a spectacular close encounter of the third kind, one that feels miraculous and ecstatic. The radiant sunlight bursting through the clouds in “Cloud Chamber” (2026) yields a similar effect, that of being poised at the dawn of something extraordinary.

Painting the works on birch panels the size of postcards is particularly effective, because this entices us to experience the imagery intimately, at close range, which puts us face to face with the bursts of energy. With this kind of art, we can enjoy transformative moments.

Angela Lane, “Diamond Light,” 2026, oil on birch plywood, 14 x 11”.

The most exhilarating works are those where we are less cognizant of the source of the energy but instead are really focused on the energy itself. The two orbs in “Transference” (2025) are barely discernible, as they are overpowered by faint concentric rings that seem to pulsate before our eyes. The quiet landscape in “Diamond Light” (2026) is supercharged by the luminous vibrations of a soft triangular form and a halo that simulates a rainbow. If there really is a light at the end of the tunnel as our lives come to an end, Lane seems to have envisioned some joyous notions of what it actually might look like.

David S. Rubin is a Los Angeles-based curator, writer, and artist. As a curator, he has held positions at MOCA Cleveland, Phoenix Art Museum, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, and San Antonio Museum of Art. As a writer he has contributed to Art and Cake, Art in America, Arts Magazine, Artweek, ArtScene, Fabrik, Glasstire, Hyperallergic, and Visual Art Source. He has published numerous exhibition catalogs, and his curatorial archives are housed in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

For more information: www.davidsrubin.com