Trujillo's office parks, fast food joints, and big-box retail environments represent the anomie of contemporary urban existence. Small, faceless persons, confront a seemingly endless array of products and services in oversized and starkly utilitarian environments. Despite the subject matter, however, Trujillo's paintings do not condescend or condemn. For although the artist depicts an increasingly fast-paced world, where attention spans have diminished beyond the point of no return, he subverts the freneticism by rendering the settings in an objective, careful manner that allows viewers to experience an alternative, highly aesthetic reality hidden within these locales.

Although based on direct observation, Trujillo's urban-scapes are entirely synthetic and rigorously structured. While the places depicted are nominally in the Los Angeles area, they are, in fact, generic environments familiar to most Americans. For the artist, they provide an almost infinite range of possibilities for the formal exploration of color and light. Indeed, the depiction of light, both artificial and natural, is analyzed and rendered with extreme care; Trujillo paints light that cannot be captured photographically. In describing his meticulous process, the artist cites the 19th-century French master Corot's maxim for painting: first form, then tone, color, and finally surface. Trujillo also completes a fully executed grisaille of each painting prior to engaging with his oils.

Trujillo's paintings take the numbing sameness of these ubiquitous, quotidian spaces and translate it into something that is simultaneously moving and transcendent. In his world, the grandeur of a hot, western evening sky transforms a Wendy's into a place of magical, mysterious beauty, and a concrete-laden Costco food court becomes a contemporary translation of Pieter Bruegel's The Harvesters (1565).

Marc Trujillo exhibits nationally on both coasts. His work has been featured in numerous publications including ARTnews, Los Angeles Times, Southwest Art, and Artweek, among others. He is the recipient of the 2001 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, and is currently an instructor of painting and drawing at Santa Monica College in Los Angeles. This is Trujillo's sixth solo exhibition at Hackett-Freedman Gallery. The artist currently resides in Los Angeles.