St. Catherine's

Tivey began his career in Los Angeles as a member of the "Light and Space" movement. Alongside James Turrell, Doug Wheeler, and others, he adopted light as his primary medium, creating projections and sculptures that render ephemeral sensations of light concrete. This work on paper incorporates gold leaf, a material he also used in contemporaneous works in which ambient light reflected off paint and metallic surfaces onto an optical screen. The form of the drawing was inspired by an aerial map of an airport called St. Catherine's. Tivey found in it a contemporary relationship to the ancient land design of Nazca and Peru. He has noted that he intended for the rough texture of the linen paper to contrast with the smoothness of the blue waxy pigment. The gold leaf adds a reflective component, which is in tension with the oil-stained paper beneath.