Cynthia Daignault’s current exhibition “Light Atlas” at the Orange County Museum of Art features an ambitious and grand portrait of America’s perimeter. Composed of 360 canvases, the work chronicles the artist’s yearlong exploration of the country and meditation on time and space. The exhibition opened on Sept. 20 and will remain on view through Feb. 8, 2026.
Daignault is an artist, musician, curator and writer. In “contemporary response” to history painting genres, she engages with the themes of memory and experience of the natural world. Born and raised in Baltimore, Daignault attended Stanford University, earning a B.A. in art and art history.
While many nineteenth-century artists have meditated on the transcendental beauty of American landscapes and created works that shaped national identity, Daignault realized that she could not name a single female artist-explorer whose works had achieved the same level of canonical recognition. This realization propelled her to address the missing voice within the artistic dialogue.
In 2014, Daignault embarked on a journey to travel across the United States. Roughly every 27 miles, she would sketch and photograph the view outside her truck window, capturing the fleeting moment through her portraits to document the memory. Afterwards, she returned to her studio in Los Angeles and translated her journey of over 30,000 miles into oil paintings, which became “Light Atlas.”
From a distance, the paintings embody photographic realism. Yet from a closer view, the texture and movement of tenacious brush strokes become more visible, rendering the canvases with the artist’s personal touch. The paintings unfold like a videotape across curved walls, inviting the viewer to follow the flow of canvases and leading them deeper into the infinite expanse.
The experience is overwhelmingly immersive as the entire exhibition space is filled with landscapes. The colors of the canvases contrast strictly with the plain-white walls, thus emphasizing the artwork itself.
By tracing the circumference of the country, Daignault was able to compile a holistic view of America and the intrinsic wonder of its landscapes. Through the depiction of springtime scenes, she vividly conveys a hopeful story of life. The 360 unframed works are placed closely together, forming a continuous horizon that showcases weather patterns, topography, economy and country development to suggest a sense of unified identity.
The concept of using paintings as a medium for documentation and reflection is familiar to Daignault. In her past projects, she has painted an outdoor clock at every hour, the same view of trees for forty days and nights and the sky every day for a year. Each work examines the coexistence of changes and repetition as well as stillness and motion, which continues to resonate throughout “Light Atlas.”
Daignault conceives her artworks as long-form paintings, which allude to journalism, narrative storytelling and literary fiction. Her poetic voyage from east to west serves as an epic tale, narrated by the valleys, plateaus and climaxes of the landscapes until she reaches her “happy ending” at the Pacific Coast.
Eva Jia is an Arts & Entertainment Intern for the fall 2025 quarter. She can be reached at jiae1@uci.edu.
Edited by Joshua Gonzales
