Take a vacuum-mirrored glass box by Larry Bell of the Light and Space school that emerged in Los Angeles half a century ago; a Polaroid snapshot of, say, water; and a whole lot of California Finish Fetish. Throw in a few lyrical, color-field canvases by the Clement Greenberg-championed Jules Olitski, and you\'ll get a sense of Jimi Gleason\'s artwork. It\'s important to note as well that Gleason spent seven years working in the studio of Ed Moses, Venice Beach\'s iconic maker of chromatic paintings whose subject is pure and vibrant color on a surface.
Gleason\'s paintings shimmer with the stuff of ephemera. His technique is derived from the printmaking that he studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, with the significant addition of layers of opalescent acrylic paints. Under Gleason\'s hand, the mediums reveal the sheer, heady beauty of hue and luminosity: painting for the joy of looking at it - a release of and surrender to ecstasy.
