Photography And Painting

Up Michigan avenue in Santa Monica, in a neighborhood packed with gas stations and nondescript buildings, you will find a surprising array of art galleries, housed in cool corrugated metal panel structures.
I sat at the cool Bargamot Bergamot café with a brownie as I waited for the Richard Heller gallery to open (at a lazy 11am) and checked out the photographs of Robbie Kaye, whose intensely colored shots give life to vintage dolls or kitschy porcelain figures - even a stuffed toy in the shape of a dachshund! Eerie, poetic and beautiful.
I'm thinking of buying myself some art for my birthday in May, and might go for one of Kaye's works...


I absolutely adored the oil paintings of Amy Bennett, on display at the Richard Heller gallery, with their sleek, distant characters, reminiscent of Edward Hopper, and omnipresent shimmering water.