"The neighborhoods where we live become the starting point to invent a make-believe vision of everyday locations, the overlooked and ordinary places we inhabit...
The architecture, primarily of the early 20th century, provides open ended territory; moments when I can be specific and yet have the freedom to transcend a particular place and time. My aim is not to replicate the exact location, but to communicate the feeling of visual excitement when I first 'see' something intriguing."
-Celia Reisman
Cul-de-Sac, 24" x 30", Oil On Linen
The neighborhoods where we live become the starting point to invent a make believe vision of everyday locations, the overlooked and ordinary places we inhabit. It is a subject that reflects my personal life. I grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland Heights, Ohio and live in the older suburbs of Philadelphia. The architecture, primarily of the early 20th century, provides open ended territory; moments when I can be specific and yet have the freedom to transcend a particular place and time. My aim is not to replicate the exact location, but to communicate the feeling of visual excitement when I first "see" something intriguing.
My paintings are complex, dense and filled with many points of view and spatial juxtapositions. In my work there is tension between opposites, the geometry of a house against the grace of a tree. This motif provides a challenge as I manipulate and orchestrate different components to resolve and unify a painting. I want to create a visual drama that surprises and forces the viewer to reconsider their experiences and expectations.
I construct my paintings from drawings made from direct observation while in my car. The large scale paintings modify and shift but still honor the initial site that inspired me. My concern with balance, proportion and an order imposed upon the subject, pays homage to early American modernists who abstracted the landscape. My paintings unfold slowly so the viewer encounters all the relationships in multiple ways, providing endless readings. Through the color, light and space shifts, I am able to compose my own idiosyncratic world.
I learned to look in a different way than most people. I grew up the daughter of deaf and hard of hearing parents in a household where communication was mostly visual and not verbal. My father would point things out that he wanted my siblings and I to see. I learned to notice, see, look carefully and pay close attention to the outside world.
Surprise Night, 20" x 20", Oil On Canvas
Developed from observational drawing and small preparatory works, Celia Reisman's paintings are an exploration of color and geometry that depict scenes from suburban neighborhoods. The emphasis on geometric shapes in her work harkens back to early American Modernism, where artists such as Marsden Hartley and Milton Avery simplified, balanced and ordered the landscape. Firmly planted within the border between representation and abstraction, the recognizable houses and landscape features maintain a clear sense of place, while simultaneously existing as artistic constructs of basic shapes and forms. The intriguing result is the familiar but mysterious juxtaposition of the boxes, triangles and organic shapes of suburbia.
Reisman often investigates the visual complexity that happens at the border between suburban properties; for example, at the perimeter of a yard, where the space is defined by a fence or a back alley. When two or more properties come together, shapes, color, and objects form a visually surprising, incongruent combination of tension and calm, perhaps reflecting the uneasy peace of collective neighborhood living. The title of this exhibition is in part a reference to the book Borderland: Origins of the American Suburb 1820 -1939 by John R. Stilgoe who documented the development of the suburbs of cities like Chicago, Boston, and New York from the mid-19th century to the onset of World War II.
Halfway Hartford, 24" x 32", Oil On Canvas
Reisman grew up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio and lives and works in Philadelphia. She received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and her MFA from Yale University. She has been represented by Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia for more than thirty years. The artist has had solo exhibits in New York City, San Francisco, and Rochester, VT, as well as being featured in a fifteen-year survey exhibit at the James A. Michener Museum in Doylestown, PA. She received a Purchase Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters Invitational Exhibition in New York City. Reisman has taught at numerous prestigious art institutions throughout the Mid-Atlantic Region.
Women have been the cornerstone of operations and exhibitions at Gross McCleaf since Estelle Shane Gross opened her gallery in 1970 on the second floor of 1713 Walnut Street. Over 50 years later, Gross McCleaf is commemorating its rich history during (re)Focus 2024, a citywide festival celebrating women-identified and BIPOC artists.
Fortitude at 50: A Resilient Five Decades at Gross McCleaf Gallery features Martha Armstrong, Jan Baltzell, Joan Becker, Elizabeth Geiger, Eileen Goodman, Penelope Harris, Heidi Leitzke, Bertha Leonard, Ying Li, Ann Lofquist, Chelsey Luster, Bethann Parker, Nicole Parker, Jane Piper, Kimi Pryor, Mary Putman, Celia Reisman, Val Rossman, Mickayel Thurin, Leigh Werrell, and Lauren Whearty with self-portraits, dreamy narratives and formally complex still-life and landscape paintings. The works suggest a deep reflection of the self and a strong point of view conveyed through their distinct subjects and styles. The exhibition represents women artists in all stages of their careers who have helped shape the Gross McCleaf legacy and brand focus toward what Sharon Ewing, former owner and director, refers to as “painterly realism” – representation in painted form.
“My work seeks to find throughlines from the ancient past to present to future. I want to know how things change through time and how they stay the same.”
- Morgan Hobbs
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to present Chronolith, Morgan Hobbs’ first solo exhibition in Philadelphia and with the gallery.
Guest writer Lauren Whearty says: “Hobbs’ body of work focuses on the slow and methodical process of building a language - a new form of communication through paint, papier-mâché, and image. Each symbolic form is a building block for a wide array of possibilities with the potential to make new meaning through different combinations, or to break down the strength of an individual symbol into a more democratic piece of a larger whole.
Elizabeth Johnson: In your statement on the Gross McCleaf website, you state that you are inspired by certain details in suburban landscapes. Does working from preparatory drawings of compelling details forestall succumbing to new enthusiasms? Do you ever relax your focus and follow tangents?
Celia Reisman: The initial detail/object/subject that inspired me to sit in my car and draw from the location is incorporated into the drawing as a focal point. I compose as I draw, selecting aspects of the place, assembling parts for the foreground, middle ground, and background while incorporating the main subject. As the painting develops, I try to stick to that initial detail. If the painting starts to shift for various reasons, I’ll use another organizational format...
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to host a solo exhibition with gallery artist, Celia Reisman. This selection of new works features Reisman’s primary subject matter, the architectural landscape of the suburbs and rural scenes. As the exhibition title suggests, Reisman collects her imagery on the side streets and back roads near her seasonal residences in Philadelphia and Vermont.
As a dedicated formalist, Celia Reisman is a life-long student of both the historical and contemporary conventions of painting. Her works can be described as specific places of nameable objects, as well as a rectangle filled with abstracted arrangements of carefully orchestrated colors and shapes. Each aspect of the composition plays a role in directing movement across the scene as Reisman’s intuitive sense of relationships between manmade and natural forms build rich images that unfold full of surprises, humor, and mystery.
Spontaneous bursts of gestural expression meet carefully planned and executed drafting in Val Rossman’s new body of abstract works. Unexpected Interference features two varieties of exploration from Rossman’s multi-faceted painting practice of layered geometric compositions and energetically marked, achromatic configurations. Each variation of Rossman’s approach combines elements of chance and moments of orchestration, both of which are fundamental to her pursuits. Rossman finds her works to be analogous to life’s common challenges, and it is in the tension created by these opposing strategies where Rossman’s work flourishes and meaning is found...
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by gallery artist, Douglas Martenson and a group exhibition featuring the work of Brian Boutwell, Betsy Eby, Deirdre Murphy, Celia Reisman, Rebecca Segall, Sterling Shaw, Michayel Thurin, Alexandra Tyng, and Leigh Werrell, curated by Douglas Martenson.
Douglas Martenson paints observationally in various locations in Maine and Pennsylvania. He meticulously documents the light, atmosphere and environment of each view through a variety of painting techniques. While the painted objects appear with local color firmly established, a sensitive eye will begin to perceive deep reds, light purples, golds, chromatic grays and a spectrum of ever-present blues. Martenson’s careful handling of paint opens up worlds within each object, giving way to a conceptual interpretation over time.
