INTRODUCING

My work flows freely between the imagined and the observed. Painting outside alla prima has fine-tuned and heightened my relationship to color, movement, and life. It has also fleshed out my understanding of desire and its position within the narrative scope of my paintings. Desire exists in the mind as movement, the journey, the moment before touching - the space beyond. Always tantamount is the importance of looking; how color operates in relationship to the physics of sight and light, and how it is used as a means of seduction in the natural world. The landscape behaves as subject, frame, and referent. In this regard also is the aperture, the thing that seeks and captures the gaze: a sun setting, a nipple, the stamen of a hibiscus. Imagination weaves in and around these subjects through juxtaposition and invention. They are forms and moments chosen from my life. I have experienced them with my eyes and my body. They are organized by my relationships, my humor, and my desires. Within this narrative of making, you see form tenderly rendered then dissolving into painted marks on surface. Puns play out in their turn. My paintings are best viewed with slow, tracing and lingering looks.

Drea Cofield is an artist currently working in Brooklyn, NY. She has exhibited in the U.S. and internationally including New York, Los Angeles, and Italy. Her most recent show was a solo exhibition at Exeter Gallery in Baltimore. More recent exhibitions include a solo exhibition at the Efroymson Gallery in Indianapolis and a solo exhibition at DePauw University. Upcoming exhibitions include a group show at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. Her work has been featured in the Brooklyn Rail, Artnet News, and Juxtapoz, and in Suzanne Hudson’s latest issue of Contemporary Painting (World of Art). She is the recipient of an Elizabeth Greenshields Grant and the Yale University Gloucester Painting Prize. Residencies include the Guild of Adventure Painters SWAB Mobile Residency in 2019. She is the Founder and Director of Bomb Pop-Up, a pop-up Art & Music initiative that focuses on providing visibility in exciting contexts to emerging and established artists and musicians; working with other 200 artists from all over the world and collaborating with institutions such as the National Academy of Design. In 2013, she received her M.F.A􏰐 from Yale School of Art (New Haven, CT), and in 2008, her B.A􏰐 from DePauw Universi-ty (Greencastle, IN).

These small, acrylic paintings ultimately connect to the public through what I see as one of many universal cultural connections, the pull of place that operates on all of us. This work is an ongoing examination of personal spaces as declarations of value. Through painting I am able to create environments that engage in a manner that is suggestive but not specific - these works are meditations on the infinite power of physical and psychological space.

Abstraction is the framework in which I investigate ideas of place dependence and the psychological need to belong somewhere; approaching abstraction as an allegorical language is ideal for connecting the nonconcrete value of belonging within space. I intend for the work to have a transparency regarding its prioritization of formal investigation and process, and strive for the outcome to be indicative of an environment that is intangible and peculiar. The works maintain a belief in abstraction’s ability to function both on a self referential level and exist as cultural objects that are discursively relevant, socially engaged, and mindful of a viewer’s emotional and intellectual experiences

Jessica Simorte completed her MFA with an emphasis in painting at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning in 2014. She is currently living in Texas where she coordinates Sam Houston State's University's WASH Program and teaches within their new MFA Program. She has shown regionally, nationally, and internationally and has been included in numerous publications including multiple issues of New American Paintings, Art Maze Mag, and Maake Magazine. Most recently, she was named a “noteworthy artist” in New American Paintings issue #162. Significant exhibitions include solos at Gallery Urbane in Dallas and Virginia Commonwealth University, as well as inclusion in shows at Big Medium in Austin, CICA Museum in Gimpo, South Korea, and Trotter & Sholer in NYC.

Ronan Day-Lewis' paintings push conventions of landscape and figuration into strange and bloody waters. Redolent of Romanticism in their search for the emotive and sublime in landscape - and punk in their embrace of the uncanny - his hallucinatory pastoral scenes are less observations of outside places than impressions of internal ones; emotional topographies brimming with the beauty and horror of existence. A deep longing pervades the work, but the object of yearning is always something just beyond reach; an amorphous place on the outskirts of civilization, or at least far, far away from his Brooklyn studio. Rendered in oil pastel on raw canvas, his tableaus are inhabited by mythical beings whose melancholic, humanoid faces emerge from quadrupedal bodies. In new works, this enigmatic personal mythology is embedded in darkly cinematic visions stemming from a fascination with the intricate dioramas of New York's Natural History Museum, which Day-Lewis frequented as a child. The spectral figures appear enclosed behind glass in desolate, primordial terrains, fixed in the gaze of mesmerized visitors. To Day-Lewis, the sublime is defined by its unattainability.

Ronan Day-Lewis (b. 1998) is a New York City based painter and award winning filmmaker who grew up in rural Ireland and graduated from Yale University with a BA in Art in 2020. Day-Lewis's visual art, which Cool Hunting wrote "succeeds in transporting visitors into a universe unto itself," has been featured in publications including Artnet, Cultured Magazine, Hyperallergic, Vogue, Office Magazine, and Whitewall. In fall of 2022, he was included in an exhibition of "rising art stars" at Sotheby's. He has been the subject of solo and two-person presentations at Spring/Break Art Show in its New York City and Los Angeles locations, as well as at Tomato Mouse Gallery in Brooklyn. Forthcoming exhibitions include a solo presentation at downtown Manhattan's D.D.D.D. Gallery, and group shows at Kasmin Gallery, Winter Street Gallery, and with Galleri Urbane at Dallas Art Fair. His work as a filmmaker includes a trilogy of videos commissioned for the Philip Glass album Les Enfants Terribles, and the short film THE SHEEP AND THE WOLF, which was awarded Best Independent Short at the IFS film festival. In 2021, he directed an album video for an EP by David Chalmin, who is also the composer for Day-Lewis's upcoming feature directorial debut.

My paintings are a key part of the cyclical nature of my practice: beginning, often, with a very loose, playful, collage-like approach of found materials (styrofoam, wood, cardboard) with which I intuitively create sculptures out of what might otherwise be discarded in a kind of consumerist response and a desire for permanence. These works range in scale from 10 inches to ten feet and often take on unintentional anthropomorphic references and presences, balanced on stands inspired by paper dolls. Making sculpture appeals as both a material challenge (what can literally bind these materials and make them stand up), an ongoing exercise of what color can do in space, and a theatrical one (what do these objects do both together and with other bodies when navigated). They become, quite literally, bodies in space (a guiding definition for me of what sculpture is), occupying three dimensions in a sort of performance with whomever interacts with them in context. Adding color/paint activates these forms; the color becomes the character/personality of the pieces, paintings I see as brought to three-dimensional life, walking off the wall and often asserting themselves very loudly. Because my practice began and is rooted in painting, when I've completed a series of sculptures, I return to painting to both study and memorialize the works just completed— creating "portraits" of these absurdist forms feels soothing, exciting and a way to see what I did with color in that context. Flattening these works back to the two dimensional plane also "activates" these bodies in a different kind of context.

Megan Reed earned her MFA in Painting from California College of the Arts in San Francisco, CA, where she was the recipient of the Graduate Painting Teaching Fellowship and the Rex Ray Material Support Award. She also holds an MA from Southern Illinois University and a BFA from New York University. She has taught at California College of the Arts, Diablo Valley College and Southern Illinois University. She has been an Artist- in-Residence at MASS MoCA, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center and at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, where she created an installation as part of the campus's permanent art collection. Her work has appeared twice in New American Paintings, in Vogue Magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She has been included in group shows at Harper's Los An-geles, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Berkeley Art Center, MASS Moca, and Johansson Projects, among others. Her most recent solo show was held at Halsey McKay Gallery, in East Hampton, NY.

Statement: Stemming from my infatuation with the formal elements of painting, my work pairs down simple, anthropomorphized shapes in an effort to explore paint and color theory while simultaneously creating tension and humor through color, edges, and texture. In utilizing color theory to create color relationships that result in sensory optical experiences upon viewing, I can trick my viewer into seeing colors as other than themselves, adding a layer of humor to the production of the works. The playful, human qualities of painting are incorporated into the work through the use of amorphous shapes animated within the picture plane. A long, slim shape with rounded off edges starts to feel like an arm. A chunky oval with a modest circle balanced on top begins to resemble a body. A sharp corner and soft curve begin to feel at war with one another. The introduction of curved shapes allows for a push back against the bravado of minimalism and geometric abstraction I have experienced as a female artist in those fields, adding feelings of tension that mimic my own in relation to those ideas.

Bio: Bartolone obtained her BFA from the University of Dayton and her MFA from Kent State University. She is currently working and living in northeastern Ohio where she is the Curator of the Malone Art Gallery at Malone University, Canton, OH. Her work has been seen in publications such as Art Hole Magazine, London, ENG, and Okay Cool Magazine, New York, NY. Within her career, she has shown at Project Gallery V, New York City, NY, the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH, The Contemporary, Dayton, OH, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, Pittsburgh, PA, the Oceanside Museum of Art, San Diego, CA, and the St. Louis Artists’ Guild, St. Louis, MO, among others, including an upcoming solo exhibition at Studio M within the Massillon Museum, Massillon, OH, in 2024.

My current series of paintings offer a metaphysical connection to the world by preserving the spirit of the landscape where I am from and other natural places I have recently spent time in. I grew up in Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay where my father was a landscape architect, my grandmother a landscape photographer, and my grandfather a pioneering wetland scientist. In recent years it has become clear, the tidewater landscape I call home is slowly disappearing because of the bay's rising sea level eroding the land.

This body of work ties our ephemeral landscapes to my fascination with the spiritual complexities of our existence. The pieces often depict vivid sunsets, full moons, or sunrises; transitory times of day that highlight our fleeting nature, but are ultimately perpetual, and invite meditation. Beaches, wetlands, mountain ranges, high plains, deserts and wooded areas where I have felt the comfort and vast mystery nature holds, are sources for inspiration.

Saskia Fleishman (B. 1995, Baltimore, MD), graduated Rhode Island School of Design in 2017 with a B.F.A. in painting. She has been an artist in residence at The Jentel Foundation, Tongue River Artist Residency, Vermont Studio Center, Wassaic Project, PADA Studios, ChaNorth and Trestle Studios, and a curator in residence at Otis College of Art and Design. Saskia’s work has been exhibited at Red Arrow in Nashville, TN, Pentimenti Gallery in Philadelphia, PA, Dinner Gallery in New York, NY, Unit London in the UK, Goucher College in Baltimore, MD, The Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington, VA, and Silo 6776 in New Hope, PA, among others. In addition, her work has been featured in Make Magazine, ArtMaze, Root Quarterly, Friend of the Artists, and Galerie Magazine. Fleishman is based in Philadelphia, PA.

Bertrand Fournier (1985) lives and works in Janville Sur Juine, France. Between abstraction and symbolism, figuration and minimalism, Bertrand Fournier works principally on color and its combinations. The use of color is strong and outspoken with a vintage touch. The cheeky titles give small clues regarding the unfamiliar figures and compositions. The lines he sets up are clear and decisive, while his brushstroke with the use of oil paint gives the right visual aspect and texture on the canvas. Fournier has been included in exhibitions in Miami, LA, Sydney, New York, and extensively across Europe

Robert Minervini is an artist working in painting, mural painting, printmaking, and site-specific public art. His work examines spatial environments and notions of utopia in large-scale cityscapes, landscapes, and still-life arrangements. 

He received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and his BFA from Tyler School of Art. His work has been exhibited nationally, including solo shows with Hirschl & Adler Modern, NYC; Edward Cella Gallery, LA;  Rena Bransten Gallery, SF; as well as group and two-person exhibitions with the San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, Torrance Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Palo Alto Art Center, Schneider Museum of Art, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. He is a recipient of the Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship by the San Francisco Foundation, and the Carmela Corso Scholarship by Tyler School of Art. He has completed multiple murals and public art commissions nationally including through the San Francisco Arts Commission, The Alameda County Arts Commission, and the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. He has been a resident artist at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, the Headlands Center of the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. His art has been published in New American Paintings (No. 91 and No. 109), Beautiful Decay, and Mural Art: Large Scale Art from Walls around the World. Minervini’s work has been reviewed in the LA Times, Modern Painters, San Francisco Chronicle, Art ltd., and featured in ArtWeek LA, 7x7 Magazine, and The Huffington Post. His work is in the collections of the San Jose Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, the City and County of San Francisco, and many private and corporate collections. He currently lives and works in Florence, Italy and Oakland, California.

Juan Alberto Negroni (Bayamón PR 1979) possess an MFA in Studio Arts from Southern Methodist University in Dallas TX, an MA Ed in Art History and Museum Studies from Caribbean University PR and a BFA with a Major in Printmaking from Puerto Rico School of Fine Arts and Design. Counts with seven solo shows, The Defect Effect, If it weren’t for my horse, Not About Beauty (Religion, Politics and other failures) all in San Juan, PR, Tiny Floral Show, in Dallas TX and A Midsummers Night’s Dream at 18.2208° N, 66.5901° W, Texas Woman’s University, Denton TX, Sereno at Carneal Simmons, Pacificaribbean at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, San Luis Obispo CA and Maneras de Llegar at Sagrado Corazón Univ. Art Gallery in San Juan PR.

Negroni has participated in multiple group shows such Dialectic City, curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates in San Juan PR 2015 and 2018, Art in America, curated by Julie Torres at The Satellite Show in Miami FL 2015 & Elizabeth Stone Harper Gallery, SC in 2016, Kinds of Monuments, Zattere Cultural Flow Zone, Dorsoduro, Venice IT, 2da Gran Bienal Tropical in Loiza, PR, Home & Visitor at Le Consortium, Dijon FR, Topologies of Excess: A Survey of Contemporary Practices from Puerto, San Luis Obispo CA, Hail Mary at Liliana Bloch Gallery, Equity in the Arts Fellowship Exhibition, Talley Dunn Gallery, Dallas TX, Galée Royale at Gallerie Rompone, Cologne DE, Garden Party, curated by Danielle Avram and many others.

He is a recipient of the Meadows Artistic Scholarship Award 2015 and the 2017 Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'art Dijon Residency Fellowship.