Brooke Harker’s most recent Gabba exhibition Timescapes
showed Jan 25 - Apr 3, 2025

Brooke Harker is a contemporary artist based in Los Angeles, California. Her lively paintings of cities and coastal scenes are characterized by energetic brushstrokes in ink and thick oil paint applied with palette knives. These vibrant depictions of daily life capture a sense of motion and highlight moments of synchronicity.

Harker calls herself a historian of the ordinary. Her paintings are a collaboration with all of the people who’ve contributed to a place over time: architects, engineers, city workers who’ve placed street signs, and pedestrians whose colorful fashion landed in view at the perfect moment. All of their individual actions brought together one moment, fated to be captured on canvas.

Fascinated by other cultures and languages since childhood, Harker has lived abroad and participated in projects and residencies throughout Europe and Asia. She continues to travel for inspiration, yet always returns home to Los Angeles to paint in an outdoor studio in the California sunshine.