Painting from what he calls “the middle ground of common experience,” Trujillo uses his environments as the foundation for a personal vision. He depicts places common to North American urban and suburban landscapes such as big chain and warehouse stores, gas stations, shopping malls, and chain restaurants. Ever mindful that his paintings are neither “critique nor worship,” he distances himself from human dramas and avoids overt irony and fantasy. In spite of this, Trujillo’s scenes force us to look closely at the world around us, revealing truths that evoke discomfort or elicit thought and self-examination. Ultimately, Trujillo’s paintings are about painting. Interpretation is left to the viewer.
Born in Albuquerque in 1966, Trujillo received his B.F.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, and his M.F.A. from Yale University. Since then, Trujillo has shown widely on both East and West coasts, including solo exhibitions in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. A recipient of the 2001 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, Trujillo was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 2008.
Trujillo’s work was featured in the exhibition The Gildless Age at the Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles in 2016. In 2017, Trujillo was celebrated with two separate solo museum exhibitions: Marc Trujillo: Urban Ubiquity at the Bakersfield Museum of Art, CA and Marc Trujillo: American Purgatory at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, Charleston, SC.
