Gil Mares
Fine Art Photographer
A distilling eye trained on the working edge of Los Angeles Harbor.
Gil Mares is a San Pedro–based fine art photographer whose work transforms the overlooked machinery of the Port of Los Angeles into saturated, painterly abstractions. For more than two decades, he has trained his lens on the cargo freighters that pass through the harbor — what he describes as "great whales with battle scars" — using a distilling process to draw the essence out of what's already in plain view.
Drawing on the language of analytical cubism and the abstract expressionists, Gil composes with color, texture, and form until the worn hull of a working ship reads as pure painting. The mundane becomes monumental. The industrial becomes intimate.
Gil's photographs are held in private and corporate collections across the United States and in London, and his image work has appeared in the feature film Company Men (Tommy Lee Jones, Ben Affleck, Kevin Costner), on book and album covers, and in publications including Harper's Magazine and Art New England.
“Evocative, confined intensities. Kingdoms of color and light and shape… that quality of style so pure that the viewer becomes one with what is viewed.”
— Frank Iosue on the Artistry of Gil Mares
Observe · Distill · Reveal
From the Docks of San Pedro to Galleries Coast to Coast
Grand Prize · Portraits and Impressions of the Port of Los Angeles
Gil's connection to the harbor isn't aesthetic alone — it's civic. In 2006 he was awarded the Grand Prize in Portraits and Impressions of the Port of Los Angeles, exhibited at LA City Hall, and he has shown repeatedly at Angels Gate Cultural Center, Palos Verdes Art Center, Kidder Smith Gallery (Boston & Martha's Vineyard), David W. Streets Gallery (Beverly Hills), and Stanford Art Spaces. His work lives in the Port of Los Angeles public collection and in private collections from Palos Verdes Estates to London.
Selected Exhibitions (condensed)
Gloria Delson Contemporary Arts, Los Angeles · PS Zask Gallery, Rancho Palos Verdes · Jeff Mitchum Gallery at The Bellagio, Las Vegas · Kidder Smith Gallery, Boston · David W. Streets Gallery, Beverly Hills · Stanford University · Los Angeles Film Festival · Angels Gate Cultural Center, San Pedro.
Find Your Piece
Each Gil Mares photograph is a limited, signed work — a fragment of the harbor made permanent. Visit us in Torrance or browse the full collection online.
A ship’s anchor in weathered gold, shot so close the rust becomes topography — every pit and flake rendered like a landscape. Behind it, the hull falls away into deep, working blue. Gil Mares photographs machines the way portraitists photograph people: up close, unflinching, fond. It reads like a portrait of something that spent its life holding on.
Details
Artist: Gil Mares
Technique: Photograph on aluminum
Colors: Gold, Deep Blue
Single print.
Pick it up at the gallery in Torrance, or we’ll ship it insured anywhere in the US.
Dimensions: 9 x 14 in.