show, and Doolin soon enrolled in the MFA program at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1968, he was asked to participate in The Field, the inaugural exhibition for the reopening of the National Gallery of Victoria. He sent three new paintings which were highly praised by several critics, and subsequently acquired by Australia's three principle art museums. In 1969, he began painting a new series of "luminous and ethereal" Artificial Landscapes with a "minimalist aesthetic" known as the Arch Series. Central Street Gallery contacted Doolin in 1970 to mount a second show, and he sent nine of his new Artificial Landscapes. This show was an unqualified critical and financial success. Western landscapes In Los Angeles, Doolin's work became more representational, following his desire to create "more 'traditional' illusionistic paintings from direct observation." The artist spent much of his two years at UCLA "painting illusionistically -- observed reality, dreams, fantasies, and memories." The following year, he became an instructor at the university while furthering his exploration of illusionistic painting. Photorealism and Conceptual Art had emerged to become two of the dominant styles during this period, and both of these movements influenced the artist's epic work Shopping Mall. Doolin spent four years (1973–77) working on this piece, "a large-scale, detailed aerial view of the intersection of Arizona Avenue and Third Street in Santa Monica -- which established his reputation as an important contemporary interpreter of the Western landscape." The artist "spent the first two years sketching and photographing the site from every possible rooftop vantage point, then constructed a highly detailed diagonal composition of a busy intersection." The painting was the principle work of a solo exhibition at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall Park in 1977, garnering enthusiastic reviews. The piece was then sent on a national tour of Australia in 1978, with stops in seven cities. In 1980, on the heels of this latest success and the dissolution of his marriage, Doolin was awarded a three-year Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, which allowed the artist to relocate to a remote stretch of the Mojave Desert to paint. "The austere beauty of the desert had fascinated him since his hitchhiking trips west in the 1950s" and he found inspiration for his art during this period by drawing on the unique elements of the desert landscape. He returned to the urban environment of Los Angeles in 1983, and by the