Todd Carpenter

Limiting his palette to gray, black, and white, Todd Carpenter captures striking moods and lighting conditions in his landscape paintings. Carpenter lives in Southern California, and he paints in response to the specific light and air qualities of the region. His works blend misty mountain ranges and skylines with sharp silhouettes of trees and other flora, creating a strong sense of mood with only grayscale tones. A trained neuroscientist, Carpenter brings this science background into his art, exploring how the brain recognizes and interprets formal elements. “Light enables us to understand properties such as form, texture, and depth. In fact we seem to recognize objects not so much by their details as by the manner in which they illuminate,” the artist has said.