An award-winning NYC blogazine, primarily about painting
Monday, March 2, 2026
Contributed by Margaret McCann / “When I Don’t Sleep I Dream” at the Museum of Modern Art traces the odyssey of Afro-Asian Cuban painter Wilfredo Lam (1902–1982). His 20th-century oeuvre encompasses a prescient global combination of influences. Youthful talent afforded him portraiture study in Spain, where he remained for 15 years. But, like Goya, inclination and events pushed his art past appearances.
Contributed by Sharon Butler / It’s February and my head is already spinning. I saw a few shows yesterday and recommend a trip to 15 Orient on 72 Walker Street (enter on Cortlandt Alley) to see Mitchell Kehe’s show “Bonded by the Spirit of Doubt,” in which enigmatic composition seems to affirm and concretize the pit I feel in my stomach. If narrative is more your jam, stop by LUNCH, a pop-up space downstairs from NADA headquarters at 311 East Broadway. Bill Arning has curated a show called “Ambiguous Storytellers” featuring Hannah Barrett, Tyler Brandon, Ario Elami, Matthew Gilbert, T.J. Griffin, Paula Hayes, Brian Kenny, Phil Knoll, Steven Lack, Jean Paul Mallozzi, Daniel Morowitz, Donna Moylan, Rajab Ali Sayed, and Erik Daniel White. Don’t miss Hilary Harnischfeger’s “Song for Clouds,” the artist’s fifth exhibition at Uffner & Liu. She crafts handmade objects that uncannily reflect the geological processes of tectonic pressure, sediment layering, and mineral buildup. Two Coats fave Alex Kwartler returns to Magenta Plains with “Off-Peak,” a solo show in which he presents “an inventory of passing attentions” that perfectly capture this age of distraction.
The “Sell America” trade, Spot On, Street Corner Conversations, Insomnia Project, Visual Quitter, and Two Coats of Paint Resident Artist Craig Drennen arrives this month….
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Because of you, Two Coats of Paint will continue to thrive in 2026. Your contributions will enable us to continue producing these painting-centric monthly gallery guides that help the painting community discover exhibitions in New York City, the Hudson Valley, and beyond. Cheers to another year of great art, great writing, and great community, despite the dark days ahead….
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Invitations, dates, details — McBride/Dillman, CLEA RSKY, 68 Prince Street Gallery in Kingston, the first Open Studio of 2026. This piece was originally published in Sharon Butler Notebooks on Substack.
Contributed by Marjorie Welish / Robert Storr’s canvases are designed to counter expectations and require us to discard habitual taste. Disequilibrium reigns in abstract compositions exploiting the inexhaustible potential of the basic unit of the square. To keep the viewer alert, he employs novel moves and tactics, inserting an eye-catching red block within otherwise black and white interlocking compositions. But Storr’s paintings, on view at Vito Schnabel through January 17, are not about color, or even about perception and finesse bestowed to a surface. Rather, color for him is a signal to attend to a structural remit for composition.
Contributed by Sharon Butler / A few days after the final 2025 Two Coats of Paint Resident Artist left, I packed a bag and tagged along with the editor on a short trip to Dublin. He had a non-art-related conference, and I so I walked around the city, admiring countless wool tweeds and hand-knit sweaters, checking out art, and catching up with friends. When we got back, he wrote about Stephanie Deady’s painting show at Kevin Kananvaugh, and I tackled Alan Butler’s mind-spinning data-driven spectacle at Green on Red.
Hello, December! I’m grateful to everyone who has already supported Two Coats of Paint 2025 Year-end Fundraising Campaign. With roughly four weeks left, we still need additional contributions to fund 2026. If you haven’t yet donated, I encourage you to consider making your tax-deductible gift now. For two decades, I’ve managed to sustain Two Coats of Paint on a lean…
Contributed by Lucas Moran / Maybe death isn’t final but simply a door leading into another room. That feeling ran through “Often I am Permitted to Return to a Meadow,” an excellent group show at Active Space in Bushwick curated by Patrick Bower and Robert Zurer of Immaterial Projects. It tapped into whatever lies just beyond perception: the subconscious, the occult, the spirits, the talismans, the circus freaks. Everything half-seen or half-remembered was allowed to take shape. If contemporary painting has drifted away from figuration and identity, this show suggested we may be heading towards something more concealed – art that conjures rather than describes, call it hiddenist painting, embracing what is buried, invisible, or occulted, where death, memory, and imagination loop into one.
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Stephanie Deady’s coolly seductive oil-on-birchwood paintings now on display at Kevin Kavanagh Gallery in Dublin – all archly titled, like the show itself, Emotional Calculus – draw you in like mirages of serenity. For that purpose, they incisively deploy beauty: tawny, fluid backgrounds envelop rhythmically interacting shapes of red, blue, or white, lending each package of images visual harmony and compositional stability. In due course, the paintings reveal deeper intent, which is to complicate and enrich your ultimate apprehension of the presumptively simple life.
Many thanks to those who have contributed to Two Coats of Paint’s 2025 Year-end Campaign. About five weeks remain, and we could use quite a bit more help. For those who have not yet made a move, I urge you to make your tax-deductible contribution soon.
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / The Iranian government has looked askance at political assertiveness and social progressivism since the revolution of 1979. The pressure under which women operate is especially heavy. Political protest, however, cannot be a way of life. Day to day, Iranians are compelled to avoid confrontations that could place them in jeopardy, discreetly acknowledging anguish and resolving to sublimate it. Shirin Mirjamali, whose exquisitely intense works on paper are now on display in her solo show “Hidden Longing” at Anita Rogers Gallery, exemplifies this essentially pensive disposition.
Contributed by Marjorie Welish / The group show “Fold, Drape, Repeat” now up at Ceysson & Bénétière does what it says. A select showing of work by the loosely aggregated French collective Supports/Surfaces, the exhibition embodies the very assembly involved in making art. Offbeat maneuver never succumbs to product or merchandise. Put another way, each individual artist emphasizes how the construction of art respects the commonplace materials at hand.
Contributed by Sharon Butler / If you follow me on Instagram, you probably noticed that the new paintings have been stacking up in the studio […]
Welcome to the Two Coats of Paint November selected guide to painting-centric exhibitions in New York, Brooklyn, and Queens….
