Sunset Glare and Shopping Carts: L.A.’s Double Life in Sayre Gomez’s Paintings

Los Angeles is often seen as a city of golden light and endless possibility, but Sayre Gomez’s canvases tell a different story—one where the glow of a perfect sunset falls on burnt-out cars and abandoned shopping carts. Gomez’s early days in a photo lab shaped his fascination with the overlooked corners of city life, fueling an archive of images that now form the backbone of his hyperrealistic, slightly surreal cityscapes. His "X-Scapes" blend found photos, personal snapshots, and digital stock images, layering reality with fiction to highlight the contradictions of urban sprawl. Techniques borrowed from Hollywood set painting—airbrush, stencils, trompe l’oeil—let him conjure up scenes that are both familiar and unsettling. The result: a Los Angeles where the dream and the debris exist side by side, each exposing the other. By spotlighting the discarded and the decayed, Gomez challenges the glossy myth of L.A., inviting viewers to see the city’s beauty and its brokenness in the same frame. #SayreGomez #UrbanArt #LosAngelesCulture