“This just lowered my cortisol,” reads a comment posted underneath a photograph of “Entanglement of Light,” a recent painting by Los Angeles-based artist Jennifer Guidi. In the image, the sun hangs above the water, sinking or rising at dusk or dawn, its glow reflecting against the ripples of the ocean below and melting into the sand.

In online discourse, lowered cortisol has become a colloquial way of describing a tempered nervous system, a sense of calm. Meeting each other from alternate parts of Los Angeles, a city engulfed in heat, with soaring temperatures apparently affecting the patience and attitude of every driver on Sunset Blvd, Jennifer appears on my screen as calm and tempered as I imagine that Instagram commenter might be.

Perhaps this has to do with her upcoming date to swap Southern California for Paris this weekend to set up her solo exhibition, Waterfall, before its opening on Sept. 3 at Gagosian on rue de Ponthieu. “That’s what I'm looking forward to right now,” she tells me beaming, and I can already visualize her there: surveying the space, hanging up the pieces, attending to light, color, texture, composition, joy—all of the elements we’ve spent the last half hour discussing.

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Guidi is an artist preoccupied with places—the ones we inhabit in the world as well as in ourselves. She considers the feelings these places elicit, the connections they cultivate, the peace they inspire, and lets this understanding inform nearly everything she does, and everywhere she goes. “For me, they hold moments of awe, inspiration, optimism, and calm that I find in nature,” she says about the ones featured in this particular exhibition: “they are places I've been, places I imagine, or places I would like to go.”

Her paintings are vibrant and lively, rich in both color and texture, always with a luminous center that spreads, illuminating the entire piece and even the viewer standing before it. “The work is about my love for this world and my gratitude to be here in this moment in time,” she explains, “my love of making, of painting, and my love of the sun, the moon, the earth, the air, the water.”

Guidi’s awareness of her surroundings bolsters a desire to locate or generate feelings of belonging. As a little girl, she organized and reorganized her bedroom; as a young woman, she painted her apartments new colors, even if only a single wall: “finding some way to transform it, a way of claiming a space, of saying: this is mine.” When asked about the source of this instinct, whether she thought it aesthetic or spiritual, whether there was really a difference between the two, she described feeling a sensitivity not only to the space around her but also to where she fit within them, a longing for ease as well as excitement, organizing in the hopes of “being transported to another place.”

Reflecting on her most personal work, a small painting of a beach in Hanalei, she describes “thinking of a place as an oracle. Somewhere you can go, ask the universe a question, and receive information," and concludes: "That painting does that for me.” The notion of one place serving as a gateway to another is as integral to Guidi’s artistic practice as to her personal philosophy. She meditates regularly and follows a strictly regimented morning routine, promoting internal and external alignment, grounding herself as the sun rises.

Much has changed since Guidi first started painting and promoting her art: “You didn’t have any control over letting people know that you were working, painting, alive,” she explains, describing creating without influence over your own public narrative or outreach, existing at the whim of the galleries. For Guidi, the proliferation of the internet and social media provided what nature, meditation, and the art itself had already given her: a means of connecting to something larger. “It was such an amazing moment for me,” she says of those early Instagram days: a community that encompassed gallerists, curators, collectors, and artists alike.

Still, Guidi understands the need not to let our digital lives infringe on living our real ones: “There has to be a separation between life and social media.” Her artwork seems to urge something similar, encouraging us, even in this heat, to be present, to step outside, to take in the sun. There’s comfort in knowing this reminder is nearby, only one click or plane flight away.