As Brooklin A. Soumahoro made his way through his industrial-style studio in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Glassell Park, he pointed out oil paintings in various stages of completion, and compared the act of creating them to another personal passion: cycling. “It’s about laying one brushstroke at a time, building the composition with the same patience it takes to climb a mountain—one pedal-stroke at a time,” he said, drawing parallels between two feats of endurance. Soumahoro’s discipline and fervor shine through his paintings, conveying optimistic energy by balancing methodical compositions with an intuitive sense of how colors work.
Born in Paris and based in LA since 2019, Soumahoro is a self-taught painter who approaches color theory as a matter of both feeling and science. His paintings’ brilliant palettes and dynamic patterns—inspired in part by West African textile designs—transform his canvases into portals, inviting viewers to dive within. “Choosing color is emotional and intuitive, while researching patterns is very cerebral,” the artist explained as he pulled several white binders off a shelf. He flipped through pages of notes detailing specific formulas for each painting’s color scheme. To show how he thinks about the subject, he pulled out a piece of paper and drew an X-and-Y grid with a sloped line running up the middle, demonstrating how incrementally increasing each shade’s degree of saturation creates a seamless gradient. At that moment, the studio seemed to turn into a sort of lab, with Soumahoro channeling data that explained why some colors stand still and others vibrate in different contexts.
Striking a balance between left brain and right, between logic and emotion, comes naturally to Soumahoro, whose paintings exhibit machinelike precision while showcasing textured brushstrokes that reveal the artist’s hand. In addition to scientific qualities, his mind turns toward synesthesia, allowing him to equate musical rhythms with colors and patterns. Taking on the role of conductor, he studies rhythmic patterns by listening to albums on repeat—“searching for vibrations, frequencies, and cadences,” he said—that inspire the arrangements that carry the colors in his paintings. “The pattern is the rhythm,” he explained, “and colors are the musical notes.” Also instrumental are thoughtfully planned underpaintings of vibrant pigments like neon chartreuse and blazing magenta that create foundations for lively shapes to dance upon while peeking through slight cracks that emerge.
Brooklin A. Soumahoro: Window, Ylw/Ble.1.24, 2024.
Courtesy François Ghebaly, New York and Los Angeles
Soumahoro’s most recent body of work, first presented in his solo exhibition “The Open Window” at François Ghebaly gallery in LA last year, was inspired by his travels to the south of France, where he encountered sights reminiscent of those that inspired Henri Matisse. Saturated pigments of fuchsia and burgundy in Window, Pnk/Prl.1.24 (2024) complement the steel blue and seafoam hues of Window, Ble/Grn.1.24 (2024), evoking the Fauvist palette of Matisse’s Open Window, Collioure (1905). This painting became an essential touchpoint for Soumahoro, for its significance in the history of Modernism, and its sun-drenched Mediterranean hues and symbolic form, which Matisse revisited in the more pensive iteration French Window at Collioure (1914), made at the start of the Great War. Soumahoro said he enjoys engaging with art history to pay homage to oil painting’s expansive provenance. “Keep an open mind to yesterday,” he said, “to understand today.”
