Image courtesy of Untitled and Sol Summers.
interview by Oliver Kupper
intro by Mia Milosevic
Experimenting with concepts of extremism, Sol Summers manifests the mythology of the American West in a way that refuses to compromise its own convictions. Channeling the human propensity to accept the bizarre without further questioning, Summers fuses synthetic pigments into his work which traditional landscape paintings would fervently exclude. Using the desert as a respite from the entrapments of capitalist requirements–ambition, success, renown–Summers opens up a space for honest introspection and lends a sincere sense of dignity to solitude. His admiration of Russian Realism fuses seamlessly into his appreciation for the cactus–according to Summers, limitation, hardship, and scarcity are truly fertile grounds for creativity. Sol Summers will bring his surrealist manifestations of nature to Untitled Art in Miami this December.
KUPPER: The American West is as instantly iconic as it is mysterious—when did you become interested in these magical landscapes and why?
SUMMERS: Honestly, I just saw something visually interesting in it at first. Looking back, I can trace all these threads that led me to this body of work, but at the time, I probably would’ve just told you it looked interesting to paint. It’s like Agnes Martin said: “From music, people accept pure emotion, but from art, they demand explanation.” I try to resist that need for explanation in my own work. Just trust my instincts, follow what feels exciting to me. Something about the desert just drew me in. I try my best not to overthink that. Of course, I do think about it–a lot–but I know all that thinking is just retroactive justification for some mysterious force that moved me in the first place. So the most honest answer is: I don’t know why. The slightly less honest answer–
I think my fascination with the desert was something that quietly built up over time. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, the desert wasn’t an environment I was really exposed to. But when I was a kid, my grandmother gave me this huge cactus, and it was kind of like my pet. The dog belonged to my brother, but the cactus? That was mine. Later, when my dad moved out to Nevada, I started spending more time there, and it was my first real experience of the desert. Then in 2017, I visited the desert botanical garden at the Huntington Gardens in Los Angeles, and it floored me. I felt like I was seeing nature’s creativity pushed to the edge. The plants were just really visually bizarre in a way that made me feel like I had to try and paint them. It looked like a challenge. As an artist you kind of end up looking at the world that way. Other people might be appreciating a sunset while you just mutter, “Wow that would be a crazy painting” or, “That’s better than anything I could ever paint” or something.
KUPPER: You have painted notorious cult leaders like Jim Jones and Osama bin Laden. In your mind, is there any thread that connects the mythology of the American west and the circumstances that give rise to men like Jim Jones and Osama bin Laden?
SUMMERS: The American West has always felt like the final frontier of myths—a place of extremes that pulls in visionaries, outcasts, and seekers looking for something at the edge of civilization. The desert is a place that embodies the spirit of self-reliance, introspection, and spiritual refinement—a metaphorical and literal "edge" where beliefs can be honed or distorted. It's interesting that so many of the world’s spiritual traditions originated in deserts, places that strip everything away and force you into a kind of reckoning.
One of the first paintings that truly moved me was Kramskoy’s Christ in the Desert, and that image has stayed with me–a figure alone in an unforgiving landscape, confronting something elemental within himself. To me, that’s what the desert embodies. It’s where the soul is tested, and it’s easy to see how convictions, taken too far, can blur into delusion. That’s what figures like Jim Jones or Bin Laden represent for me–the way that convictions can gradually distort into something dangerous. No one ever thinks they’re the villain; it happens so gradually, each compromise just a bit closer to a line you no longer see.
In these paintings, that’s the thread I’m pulling on—the need for honest introspection, that place where you can listen to the quiet voice of conscience. As an artist, I feel this necessity, too. You start out with certain ideals, but the pressure to survive and succeed can wear down even the strongest convictions. The need to make money, to appease the market, can gradually corrupt your soul. When you're 16 or 17 you might excoriate Koons for having studio assistants make his work. But before you know it, you're 30 and you're printing your paintings on canvas or something. I dunno. I just never want to wake up and realize I’ve compromised my values without even noticing. So the desert is a symbolic place to reconnect with what I believe in.
KUPPER: It is mentioned that you were inspired by the expansive American landscapes of Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Edwin Church—how did you discover their work, and can landscape painting become fresh and new in the 21st century?
SUMMERS: I’ve loved those painters since I was a kid. I’d stand in front of their work in museums, absolutely stunned. Their paintings are beautiful, transcendent, and I lament that somewhere along the way, we seem to have lost that simple aim–to make something beautiful.
I admire these painters deeply, but you’re right–landscape painting is as old as art itself, and finding ways to make it feel new is a tremendous challenge. But maybe that’s what draws me in- the challenge itself.
There are painters who’ve pushed the boundaries of what a landscape can do and say in the 20th century–Max Ernst and David Hockney come to mind. I also look a lot at Russian Realist painters; they’re so underappreciated. I always go back to this one painting of a tree by Shishkin–it’s one of my favorite paintings ever. I can’t even put my finger on why. It feels like he’s captured the spirit of the tree, like it’s more than just a tree. That painting, to me, is perpetually fresh. It’s the kind of work that reminds me, a painting doesn’t need to be contemporary if it’s timeless.
Of course, if you can’t be timeless, at least be timely, at least do something new. And painting landscapes in a new way feels like one of the most challenging problems you can take on as an artist. I don’t have all the answers yet; it’s something I’m figuring out as I go. But I’ve seen glimpses of it, and that’s what keeps me trying.
Sol Summers, Regeneration, 2024.
KUPPER: How do phenomena—either natural or unnatural—manifest in your work?
SUMMERS: In my painting I like to play with what defines a “natural” landscape. One of the pieces in the show features a cactus with a lens flare—a distinctly photographic element. It’s not a phenomenon that comes from the human eye but one that’s obviously a product of a camera lens. Objectively, it’s just an orb in the middle of the picture, something that might seem strange or out of place. But we’re so trained to understand the visual language of cameras that we almost overlook it. To me, that makes the painting contemporary, an expression of how our perception has evolved. Show it to someone before the advent of photography, and they’d likely ask, “What is that?”. Something about that really peaks my interest. Elements of the visual field that we become so accustomed to they seem to disappear. For these reasons, I think these paintings will not age gracefully. In a hundred years everyone will ask why there’s a big orb in the middle of the painting. But nobody now will really think twice about it. It’s just a curious thing, what you can hide in plain sight.
KUPPER: You usually feature the desert at sunrise and sunset—why is this?
SUMMERS: Sunrise and sunset are when the desert’s colors and contrasts hit a surreal extreme, yet somehow, they still read as “natural” to us. It’s a bit like testing the limits–how far I can push something visually without anyone stopping to question it. Recently, I painted a cactus using an entire tube of alizarin crimson–the exact complement of green–and yet, it doesn’t look out of place. It still reads “correctly.” I’m fascinated by how reality works the same way; things can be strange beyond belief, and yet we come to accept them without a second thought.
I also think about the idea of extremes–extreme heat, extreme cold–creating strange adaptations in life. And extreme light, casting things into bizarre forms and colors. Landscape paintings traditionally stick to earth tones, colors that feel rooted, natural. Synthetic pigments like cadmiums, those almost neon reds or yellows, rarely make sense on a landscape palette, let alone straight out of the tube. But there are paintings in this show where I used cadmium red and titanium white straight from the tube…in a landscape. And somehow, it doesn’t look weird. It just doesn’t. It confuses me too.
These transitional times of day also carry a symbolic weight for me. In those moments, the desert itself seems to undergo a shift. There’s a kind of magic in the light at those hours, a reminder of impermanence and transformation that speaks to me. I try to bring that into my work, using color and contrast to show the desert as a place hovering on the fringe of the surreal, yet still familiar.
Sol Summers, Daybreak, 2024.
KUPPER: Do you spend time in the desert—how close do you get to the landscape when painting your works?
SUMMERS: Yes, spending time in the desert has been essential to creating this show. In fact, this series led me to make my first plein air paintings, something I’m excited to explore further. The whole process has felt very personal, almost like a full-circle spiritual experience. The time I spent in the desert, alone and surrounded by its vastness, complemented the solitude in the studio–the same sense of being tested and refined. It’s an experience that connects you to the landscape in a way that goes beyond observation.
KUPPER: What is the symbolism or metaphor of the cactus?
SUMMERS: The cactus symbolizes self-reliance and the idea of thriving on being ignored. In an age where we’re all competing for attention, it’s essential for creative people to surmount that. The cactus, existing in its own space, somehow adapting and flourishing under conditions that would challenge most life forms, seeks no attention. It is content to endure, in solitude.
KUPPER: How is the desert landscape a metaphor for the human condition?
SUMMERS: I think a lot about creativity–what makes fertile ground for an artist. I keep coming back to something I saw as a kid, a TED Talk I think, about a guy who lost both his arms and started drawing with his feet. His whole point was that creativity is overcoming limitations, that’s what it fundamentally is. Creativity doesn’t thrive in easy conditions; it flourishes when there’s something to fight against.
It makes me think of this William S. Burroughs’ quote, “This is a war universe. War all the time.” Ours is a universe of conflict, clashes of opposites–light and darkness, heat and cold, scarcity and survival. And creativity is born in those spaces of tension. The Russian artists I admire came out of a culture where resources were limited but where that very limitation gave birth to something raw, something that feels both deeply human and deeply spiritual. Scarcity, hardship, isolation: these create the fertile soil for art, for survival, for spirituality.
The desert embodies this principle perfectly. It’s barren, empty, hostile, but it’s also where you find the most creative solutions to survival. Nature itself becomes strange and surreal, a war of adaptations. That’s what I find so fascinating about it–the idea that scarcity isn’t just an obstacle but a catalyst. The desert forces you to adapt, to innovate. Warhol said that business is the best art, I think survival is the best art.
KUPPER: Can you talk a little bit about the works that will be on view at the Untitled Art Fair?
SUMMERS: What will be exhibited at this show are works that I’ve painted over the last eight months. It’s my first solo show in five years. I had a lot of resistance to finishing paintings, showing paintings. It’s been a whole process of self-reflection and growth that’s been tremendously rewarding.