An award-winning NYC blogazine, primarily about painting
Friday, March 20, 2026
Contributed by Sharon Butler / After a lengthy stretch during which emerging painters have leaned into commercial preferences for the traditional, many seem to be breaking free from the market’s emphasis on imagery and narrative. Painters with a penchant for experimental, near three-dimensional approaches have bounced back into the conversation they commanded in the early 2010s. Three current exhibitions, all curated by artists, reflect various aspects of this phenomenon.
Contributed by Marcus Civin / The Philadelphia-born, New York-based painter Sedrick Chisom’s gothic, thematically inventive “…And 108 Prayers of Evil” at Clearing is his first solo show in New York. At the entrance to the gallery, a block of wall text sets the scene for Chisom’s mostly large-scale oil paintings and charcoal drawings. The action depicted occurs in the year 2210, when the Greek mythological figure Medusa is in trouble again. Almost comically, various political groups accuse her of listening to whispers in the forest and slipping gangsta rap lyrics to pious youth. A magmatic eruption threatens, and massacres have occurred in a place called Capital Citadel.
What’s up outside the city? At Jack Shainman The School in Kinderhook, take some time at the sprawling installation by Meleko Mokgosi, co-director of Graduate Studies in Painting/Printmaking at Yale. Employing a range of media dense with meaningful images and ideas, the show explores the theme of subjugation. Also in Kinderhook, stop by SEPTEMBER for “Of Waves,” a two-person abstraction exhibition featuring London-based Jane Bustin and Hudson Valley-based Anne Lindberg. The two painters investigate the things we can feel but can’t see or touch. Carrie Haddid has an elegant group landscape show called “Vanishing Point.” Also in a landscape mode but perhaps less somber is Mary Breneman’s bold landscapes at D’Arcy Simpson, which recall Marsden Hartley’s paintings of Maine. On view at Pamela Salisbury are Kozloff’s maps and a group show of work inspired by books as well as Robin Hill’s rustic-industrial sculptures.
At LABspace, Julie and Ellen have put together another fine “Holiday” sampler exhibition featuring hundreds of small works by notable artists from the Hudson Valley, Brooklyn, and beyond. Front Room Gallery and Buster Levi too offer group shows of work that would be perfect for heirloom gift-giving.
In Chatham, at Joyce Goldstein, don’t miss “Horizon Line.” Curated by Susan Jennings and David Humphrey, this will be the last show at the gallery unless someone steps up to take over the lease.
Take a look below, as there is a lot more worth checking out. Note that the Guide now includes selected listings for galleries in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. Welcome to the Two Coats Selected Gallery Guide!
Contributed by David Carrier / Painting with a loaded brush to create heavy layers of pigment by juxtaposing strands of varied colors is a distinctive, philosophically interesting art form. Eugène Leroy (1920–2000), a notable practitioner of it, had real doubt about the validity of the very act of making paintings. So did Alberto Giacometti. They asked when an artwork was finished, and answering the question is a particularly stiff challenge for one who wields a loaded brush. Such an artist tends to feel compelled keep painting until he or she can “get it right,” which may never happen. Repainting, of course, can also simply manifest love of the activity, and the desire that it never end.
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / It’s tempting to lament the demise of the takedown review. The form invites both schadenfreude and outrage, which are energizing. In the literary world, it had been fading for some time until B.R. Myers and Dale Peck revived it in the naughts. They enjoyed an extended moment of visceral celebrity, but it seemed to burn out relatively quickly on a pyre of stern earnestness. Literary Hub does publish a list of the year’s “most scathing book reviews,” but the targeted screeds – self-promoting Beltway memoirs, vanity projects by anointed novelists, didactic polemics masquerading as fiction – tend to be overripe, low-hanging fruit that would be exempt from even the most charitable standard of forbearance. The general rule of civility is still that the compulsion to shape opinion is best served by measured reason rather than reactive assault.
The pimple that showed up on Bernard’s chin felt like a small volcano. Google said squeezing it would only drive the bacteria deeper into the epidermis, so he left it alone. “What’s that thing on your face?” Anne Lavelle asked the minute he walked into the gallery.
Contributed by Iris Cushing / Donna Dennis is an artist of transition and transformation. Her architectural installations – which she pioneered in the 1960s and has continued to develop – often take the shape of transitory sites: subway stations, hotels, tourist cabins, and, in the case of her show “Ship/Dock/Three Houses and a Night Sky” at Private Public Gallery in Hudson, a loading dock. Like much of Dennis’ work, this installation draws on her experience and observation of vernacular spaces. It evokes industrial structures on the shore of Lake Superior, where the earth’s minerals are loaded on freighters by the ton and transported over water. This work marks the first time in Dennis’ expansive career that she’s combined three-dimensional architecture with painting. In merging the two media, she seamlessly creates a world for viewers to dream into.
Ed Kim opened Sunnyside Arts, in the eponymous section of western Queens on Skillman Avenue near 46th Street, in September 2022. In less than six months, it has vaulted from upstart art supply store to local cultural hub.
Contributed by David Carrier / The National Gallery’s retrospective celebrating the centenary of Lucian Freud’s birth is first exhibition of his work in a museum of historical art. Freud himself was very familiar with The National Gallery. As the catalogue says, he thought of it “as a doctor to whom, as an artist, one turned for help.” With more than 60 paintings on display, we get a full picture of his career.
Contributed by Jacob Patrick Brooks / I take it as a bad sign when galleries seize an opportunity to “respond” to something. At best, it’s slightly out of touch. The nature of putting on a thoughtful show is that it takes time and effort to pull off. Generally, the result is that it misses the moment. “New Images of Women” at Shoot the Lobster avoids this pitfall. It manages to be both provocative and timely. The work is carefully chosen, the message well-crafted and delivered like a perfectly timed punch in the stomach.
Please join us on September 15 for the opening reception –> Sharon Butler: NEXT MOVESSeptember 15 through November 15, 2022Opening reception: Thursday, September 15th, from […]
Paul Whiting talked with Jennifer Coates about her experience while stricken with Covid, her strategy for continuing to work while stuck in bed, and how she developed a series of drawings using digital and traditional materials.
Contributed by Adam Simon / Lineage is not a concept with a lot of currency these days; too close, perhaps, to its more d�class� kissing […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Amna Asghar�s gently captivating new paintings, on display at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery on the Lower East Side, explore a rich […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Argentina�s decade-long �dirty war� (1974�83) during which a right-wing military junta �disappeared� about 30,000 left-wing dissidents � that is, executed […]
Six artists meshing at Field Projects
“Sonorous” in Hackney: Stairway to heaven?
Doomscrolling 3-D + IRL: The 2026 Whitney Biennial
2025’s intrepid cinema
Sally Gall: What am I looking at?
Mira Schor: Uncensored
Two Coats Resident Artist: Nichole van Beek, March 16–20
Tappeto Volante’s rich conversations
Kate Hargrave: Unsettling and generous
Felix Beaudry’s malleable boys
Sharon’s Substack / March 3, 2026
Araujo, Greenberg, and Simon at Ptolemy
