Skidmore Contemporary Art
is pleased to present
LAURIE RASKIN:
Postcards From The Pacific
On View September 1
through September 30, 2026
Skidmore Contemporary Art is delighted to present Laurie Raskin’s newest body of work celebrating the distinctive visual culture of Southern California. Drawing upon vintage advertising, postcards, roadside signage, fashion imagery, classic automobiles, swimmers, and resort life, Raskin reimagines the optimism of postwar California through a distinctly contemporary lens. Palm Springs, Laguna Beach, San Diego, and the Southern California coast become recurring points of departure—places where sunshine, recreation, architecture, and the romance of the open road converge.
Laurie Raskin
Sun Fun Holiday, 2026
acrylic on canvas;
25.5" x 31"
Inspired by the Bauhaus, Russian Constructivism, and Pop Art, Raskin builds her compositions from an extensive archive of midcentury advertisements, vintage magazines, postcards, and books that she has diligently collected for decades. Bold fields of turquoise, yellow, coral, orange, and pink provide the stage for carefully orchestrated arrangements of figures and ephemera, punctuated by oversized typography, geometric forms, polka dots, beach balls, and graphic patterns. Her sophisticated interplay of color, scale, and imagery reflects both the formal language of 20th-century modernism and the exuberance of American commercial design.
Laurie Raskin
Dive In
2026, Mixed media with acrylic paint on canvas
Framed; 25.5" x 31"
A Los Angeles native, Raskin received her BFA and MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, where she studied graphic design, photography, printmaking, and the history of 20th-century art. Her early career as a graphic designer in the late 1970s and early 1980s helped shape the bold visual vocabulary that continues to inform her studio practice. In 1984, she was selected to design an official poster for the Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles—an intersection of art, design, typography, and Southern California culture that resonates with her work today.
Laurie Raskin
Let's Go
2025, Mixed media with acrylic paint on canvas
Framed; 36" x 36"
For this new series, Raskin looks not only to the graphic artifacts of the past but also to her own memories of growing up in Southern California. She describes the work as rooted in childhood summers spent at the beach, “sun bleached and salt-soaked,” recalling the seemingly endless days of youth spent immersed in the light and water of the California coast. The artist calls the series her “love letter to living the California dream.”
Laurie Raskin
Bounce of Summer
2026, Mixed media with acrylic paint on canvas
Framed; 39.5" x 49"
Raskin’s process begins with extensive research and hand-cut, photocopied imagery, which she assembles into black-and-white collages before translating the compositions into larger color paintings on canvas. She deliberately retains the evidence of the handmade, allowing imperfections, textures, and shifts in scale to remain visible. This tactile approach gives the paintings a warmth that Raskin associates more closely with folk art than photographic reproduction, while connecting her contemporary practice to the cut-and-paste traditions of collage and graphic design.
The resulting works occupy a compelling space between painting, collage, graphic design, and personal history. At once nostalgic and fresh, they transform familiar imagery into exuberant meditations on color, memory, place, and the passage of time. Raskin’s California is a landscape of brilliant light, water, beaches, roadside attractions, automobiles, and seemingly endless summers. Through the visual vocabulary of an era she experienced firsthand, she invites us to share in the enduring allure—and joyful possibility—of the California dream.
By returning to the printed materials and graphic language of her youth, Raskin creates a dialogue between lived experience and collective memory, preserving the spirit of midcentury California while allowing it to be seen anew. Ultimately, Raskin’s work is distinguished by its sense of pleasure—pleasure in color, in composition, in the handmade, and in the seemingly ordinary images that become extraordinary through recollection. Her paintings remind us of the emotional power held by familiar places and objects, and of art’s ability to collapse the distance between past and present.
Laurie Raskin
Fun In The Sun
2026, Mixed media with acrylic paint on canvas
Framed; 41" x 31"
Laurie Raskin's newest body of work cherishes the California dream and its infinite optimism. Her exuberantly juxtaposed images sparkle with the West Coast's enduring promise of new beginnings, sunny skies, and endless possibiilities.
LAURIE RASKIN:
Postcards From The Pacific
On View September 1
through September 30, 2026
To explore other works of art available at
Skidmore Contemporary Art
please visit us at
Skidmore Contemporary Art
326 N Coast Hwy
Laguna Beach, California 92651
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To find out more please
reach out to
lia@liaskidmore.com
310-922-5070