Rochelle Caper was committed to what she described as “fantasy that has to do with primitive instincts and emotional potency.” Trained at UCLA in the late 1960s when Richard Diebenkorn, John McCracken, and Ed Ruscha were teaching there, Caper absorbed influences from Matisse’s vivid palette and the gestural freedom of Abstract Expressionism, eventually exhibiting at Jan Baum Gallery in 1986. Her practice underwent several transformations: from lyrical biomorphic compositions to breakthrough “black paintings” with subtle color relationships, to luminous bands and dots that seem to glow from within the paper’s surface. These late works on paper, many in a compact 10 × 10-inch format, demonstrate Caper’s belief that color and composition could express memories and unconscious imagery. Caper described her process as working and reworking “a single color modulated by another color” until it acquired “meaning, presence, and wholeness,” creating intimate scenes where forms seem to surface from chromatic depths.

Artwork donated by Carole Sherick in memory of her twin sister Rochelle Caper
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