Jacob Rosenberg

It is no surprise that American artist Brian Lotti’s work takes in inner-city neighborhoods, alleyways, vistas and purposefully-striding figures – the elements inherent to the urban landscape with which his years as a professional street skateboarder made him so intimately familiar.

After a successful career in the sport (he is credited as being one of the originators of technical street skating), the Okinawa-born Lotti studied art at San Francisco State University, after which he returned to Southern California.

Directed by renowned skate director Jacob Rosenberg – responsible for the pioneering Plan B films Questionable and Virtual Reality, and whom Lotti first met 27 years ago at a skateboard camp in Santa Clara – today’s profile follows the painter as he prepares for his first solo exhibition at HVW8, a collection of oils, color studies and monotypes that captures his home base in Los Angeles’s Echo Park with bold impressionistic strokes and vivid colors that bring to mind Cezanne’s Provençal landscapes.

Echo Park by Brian Lotti at HVW8 gallery, Los Angeles runs to August 2.

James Wignall is Copy Chief at NOWNESS.