Jay Lynn Gomez
Los Jinetes (East Bonanza Rd & North Nellis Blvd), 2019
Acrylic on cardboard
Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art Collection
Gift of the artist
2019.12.001

Jay Lynn Gomez (formerly Ramiro Gomez) uses painting to draw attention to people whose jobs make them socially invisible. Living in Los Angeles, she often focuses on the migrant workers whose labor keeps the houses of the rich looking immaculate. The ephemerality of her cardboard surface corresponds to the potential transience of the people who constitute her subject matter—a transience she learned firsthand while she was working as a nanny. Gomez painted Los Jinetes while she was in Las Vegas for her two-person show with Nevada artist Justin Favela, Sorry for the Mess. Driving around town one morning, she noticed men riding horses in a vacant lot near the intersection in the title. The persistence of a rural occupation in this low-key urban setting moved her enough to film it. Once she arrived at the museum, she sat down and turned the scene into a painting. (DKS)

To watch our Virtual Tour of this piece, please click on the following link: Barrick Museum of Art Virtual Tour -Jay Lynn Gomez.

To watch the horse riders that inspired the piece, please click on the following link: Inspiration for Los Jinetes by Artist Jay Lynn Gomez.

Item Description: A painting depicting two horse riders on a circular track in a bare, brown desert environment littered with tires. There is a wall covered with graffiti in the background behind one rider, and a black wire cage next to the wall. Hills in the distance are edged with dark blue under a light blue sky.