Shared Roots mural by El Mac in Los Angeles, California

Here are two of El Mac’s most recent murals painted for the City of Los Angeles and produced with the support of Art Share L.A. and Meta Housing on the exterior of an affordable housing project in South Central LA, just below the DTLA Fashion District.

As explained by the artist, the initial inspiration for the agricultural theme of these murals came from a neighbouring community farm run by the All Peoples Community Center, Roots For Peace and the American Friends Service Committee.

According to El Mac, farming or gardening imagery can carry an extra significance in this context considering how much of South Central Los Angeles (like many low-income urban areas) lacks easy access to healthy fresh food.
The figure on the left was modelled by Rigoberto Jimenez Oropeza, and the figure on the right was modelled by Ron Finley. Both are Los Angeles residents and both grow food from the soil.
Rigo began his workers’ rights activism long ago with the United Farm Workers after being hospitalised for exposure to pesticides while working in California orange fields. Now in his eighties, he is still stubbornly working the land when not helping out with his son’s art gallery.

The choice of subjects came about partly in response to our current national (if not global) social and political climate, as well as a more local history of poverty and black-brown conflict in South Central Los Angeles. In these confusing times of demagoguery, racist scapegoating and social division, as wealth has been increasingly redistributed upward while the working poor are further disenfranchised, and organised labor has been largely weakened after decades of assault, I feel even more urgency to create conscientious and relatable public art that elevates common working people and promotes ideals of compassion, unity, equity, and interracial solidarity.

About the artist
EL MAC (Miles MacGregor) is an internationally renowned artist born and based in Los Angeles. He began painting both smaller indoor works as well as public murals and graffiti in the mid ’90s, and since that time has developed his unique visual aesthetic and rendering style which utilises repeating contour patterns.
His work draws on influences from classical European art, social realism, symbolism and devotional art, as well as the Chicano and Mexican culture he grew up around. He is best known for his meticulous paintings and large-scale murals exploring feminine beauty and honouring ordinary, overlooked, or marginalised people.