Paintings and Literature- Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s “A Reading from Homer” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Books, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia, Writers
Sep 172026
 

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, “A Reading from Homer” (1885) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

While interest in Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey grew this summer with the release of Christopher Nolan’s film version, it is also one of the oldest and most popular works of literature in the Western canon. Over the years it has been referenced by many artists in painting, film, and works of literature. In addition, according to Merriam-Webster, there are even a few words in the English language that can trace their origins back to the Odyssey.

Currently on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema‘s painting A Reading from Homer (1885).

From the museum about the work:

Here, a young poet crowned with a laurel wreath reads from Homer to an audience dressed for a festival. The setting is probably Greece toward the end of the seventh century BCE. The Greek letters in the upper right indicate that the place is dedicated to the poet.

Through attention to details such as architecture and dress, Alma-Tadema evokes scenes of everyday life in ancient Greece and Rome. However, his pictures are rarely entirely archaeologically accurate. For example, while he accurately rendered the ancient musical instrument on the left, a cithara, he also included a type of rose that did not exist before the nineteenth century.

Live readings of Homer’s works continue to this day. At the end of October, for example, the National Hellenic Museum in Chicago is hosting a marathon reading of the Odyssey taking place over two days.

Delaware Art Shows- “Shadow Work” at Chris White Gallery in Wilmington

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Delaware, Drawing, Fiber Arts, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture, Wilmington
Sep 112026
 

Jennifer Hintz Eggers, “Through the Night”, Oil on birch panel

RitaMarie Cimini, “After the Dream”, Oil on acrylic

Maia Palmer, “Splitting Headache”, Migraine Portrait Series, Charcoal and pastel on paper

Jennifer S. Rodgers, “Nearly every day PHQ-9 Depression” and “More than half the days (GAD-7 Anxiety)” acrylic paint, ink on canvas

Interactive work by Jennifer S. Rodgers– gallery visitors are encouraged to write down worries, fears or anxieties on the paper and place them in the box

Acrylic on wood paintings by Carly Maiorano

Tonight (9/11/26)  is the closing reception for Shadow Work, a group exhibition at Chris White gallery in downtown Wilmington. Curated by Jen Hintz Eggers and Rebecca Howell, nine local artists present work exploring what can be discovered through “shadow work“.

From the gallery:

Shadow Work invites impolite conversations. By shining a light on the hidden aspects of ourselves and our society, each artist examines their experience through honest dialog around parts rarely seen or discussed. From impeccably constructed portraits and florals to expressive large scale paintings and found object sculptures, these works offer a space for vulnerability by opening up the door to community.

Other artists included in the exhibition but not pictured: Regina Katz, Jane Quarterone, Rebecca Howell, and Samara Weaver.

Tonight is also Art Loop Wilmington, a monthly event where galleries and cultural spaces stay open late.

 

Throwback- Ohio Art Shows- Cynthia Daignault at Akron Art Museum

 Akron, Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Installation Art, Ohio Art Shows, Painting / Painters
Sep 032026
 

Cynthia Daignault, “Light Atlas”, 2014-2016, Oil on linen (detail)

Light Atlas, a painting series by Cynthia Daignault, was on view at Akron Art Museum in 2024.

From the museum:

In 2014, Cynthia Daignault began driving north from her home in Brooklyn, New York. She turned west in New England and south at the Pacific Northwest, and she kept going until she had traced the entire outer perimeter of the continental United States. Having calculated the necessary distance, the artist stopped about every twenty-seven miles to make a sketch so that she could record a total of 360 images, representing the full circle of her journey. After five months on the road, she returned to her studio and created the paintings of Light Atlas. In each picture, Daignault placed the horizon line at the center, helping to suggest a continuous narrative and a collective portrait of the country. Having intentionally set out in the spring, she aimed to capture a mood of optimism and rebirth.

This series is currently on view as an installation at Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, NY. The 360 landscape paintings, will be on view until November 1st. On Saturday, September 12th, you can create a landscape painting with her for the site’s Second Saturday Workshop, and on Sunday she will be discussing Light Atlas for their Sunday Salon lecture series.

Daignault’s recent series, based on Yosemite National Park‘s iconic Tunnel View, is on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston until January 2027. For these paintings she used “the “mediated consciousness” of digital images, to meditate on our urgent and evolving relationship with the American landscape”.

For more about this series, this interview, from the museum’s website, provides more background on many of the conceptual ideas she is exploring with this work.

 

Installation view, Cynthia Daignault: Valley, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, 2026-27. Photo by Mel Taing (Image via the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston website)

Yayoi Kusama (1929-2026)

 Art, Artists, Ceramic Art, Collage, Conceptual Art, Design, Fiber Arts, Films, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Performance Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Aug 282026
 

Kusama- Infinity- Official Trailer

Yesterday it was announced that Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama passed away on August 14th, at the age of 97. Although she had a long career, she became very popular much later in life for her dot-covered sculptures and paintings, as well as her Infinity Mirror Rooms installations. Infinity Mirrored Room—The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away (2013) and  Longing for Eternity (2017), are currently on view at The Broad in Los Angeles.

Kusama: Infinity, directed by Heather Lenz, follows Kusama’s life from her childhood in the mountain town of Matsumoto, to years trying to build a career in New York in the 1960s, her struggles with mental illness, and later, years after her return to Japan, her tremendous career success. The film is a fascinating portrait of an artist who dedicated so much of her energy into making art.

Delaware Art Shows- “The People’s Gallery” at Delaware Art Museum

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Ceramic Art, Collage, Conceptual Art, Delaware, Digital Art, Drawing, Fiber Arts, Glasswork, Illustration, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Printmaking, Sculptors / Sculpture, Wilmington
Aug 282026
 

As part of their programming for the nation’s 250th birthday, Delaware Art Museum is showing the work of local artists in their current exhibition, The People’s Gallery. It is a non-juried exhibition which allowed artists at all levels to contribute work.

It’s a fantastic opportunity to see what this community of artists has created and to purchase local art. Check it out before it closes on 9/6/26.

Delaware Art Shows- “Self, Realized” at The Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Delaware, Fiber Arts, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture, Video and Film, Wilmington
Aug 262026
 

Paintings by E. Lizé

The members of this year’s Artist-in-Residence Cohort (ARC) at The Delaware Contemporary, Mo Berrouet, E.Lizé, and Celeste M. Rodriguez, each explored an element of the self for their culminating exhibition, Self, Realized.

This exhibition was curated by Amber M. Chacana, the first ARC curator-in-residence, and closes on 8/30/26.

Paintings by E. Lizé

E. Lizé’s series is titled Familial World.

E.Lizé is a musical artist and trained visual artist, who paints portraits and scenes dedicated to the Black experience. E.Lizé’s goal is to bridge the gap between predecessors and successors in order to remain a catalyst in preserving Black culture and Black history. E.Lizé is dedicated to archiving and preserving cultural and artistic history. She has a strong interest in tangible history and what it means to inherit it.

Inspired by the women who raised her, E.Lizé created these portraits as a way to honor their legacies and their lives (so far). In doing so, she created a personal archive, marked by her own perspective and care for her family.

Paintings by Mo Berrouet

Mo Berrouet‘s series of work is titled Emotional World.

From the museum:

Mo Berrouet is a visual artist based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with a BFA from West Chester University. Her work explores themes of mental and physical health, personal narrative, and the complexities of the human experience, expressed through a variety of mediums including painting, sculpture, ceramics, and photography.

Berrouet delves into the world of her emotions and how they exist within her body, and how her body exists in relation to her emotions. While her subject matter is personal, the emotions and feelings within them resonate with others. For Berrouet, our collective human experiences inspire her.

Work by Celeste M. Rodriguez

Celeste M. Rodriguez chose Cultural World for this body of work.

From the museum:

Celeste M. Rodriguez is a Puerto Rican-American artist born and raised in Camden, NJ. She received her B.A. in Painting from Rutgers University-Camden. Her work examines the complex relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States through visual storytelling, addressing themes of colonialism, cultural erasure, and resilience. Utilizing video, painting, drawing, sculpture, and collage. She confronts exploitation while honoring Puerto Rican strength. She views art as personal and political, and through her art, reimagines a future for Puerto Rico rooted in dignity and self-determination.

Delaware Art Shows- John Breakey at The Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Delaware, Painting / Painters, Wilmington
Aug 262026
 

“Calla Lilly Cloud”, 2024, Acrylic and mediums on stretched linen support

In John Breakey‘s paintings for Passing Each Other, at The Delaware Contemporary, he uses flowers and skies to explore the passing of time.

His statement about the work:

Foreground flowers and background sky move at their own pace and span of life.

Together, composed for specific periods within the day, combined to express captured growth and deliberate movement.

A cloud’s soft color shifts throughout time; they can’t seem to sit still.

And what about the flower? Each blossom evolves, invisibly slow. By days, but finite.

Flowers being what they are, fall.
Clouds, how quickly they can pass.

Like the years, the more one has.
This is my current work; a series that mixes different forms of time.

In the work above, Yellow Calla Lillies (2026) he reorders the panels to explore these ideas even further.

He says this about the painting:

I have an engraving by Aki Kuroda in the studio that speaks quietly to me: Flower X, 2004. Simplicity and grace packed into eight by ten inches. It served as a challenge to make this rendition of lillies more simple. Not graphic, not hard edged like Kuroda’s work but a new version of the work to the immediate right.

There was a deliberate choice to flip the left and right panels: these works are about time.

Two kinds.
Faster as the clouds pass.
Slower; a flower’s young green pigments before moving to dark.

Reordering the panels was my way of asking if moments are what we think they are.
Is how we account for time spent as linear as a best guess recall or something else?

This exhibition closes 8/30/26.

Flashback- NYC Art Shows- Gladys Nilsson at Matthew Marks Gallery

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters
Aug 212026
 

“Gigantica und der Messerschmitts”, 1965, Acrylic on panel in artist’s frame

“Bird Toy”, 1965, Acrylic on panel in artist’s frame

These paintings were on view in Gladys Nilsson: Honk! Fifty Years of Painting at Matthew Marks Gallery in NYC in the early part of 2020. Nilsson was one of the original members of the Hairy Who, a group of Chicago artists who exhibited together in the mid-1960s.

Now in her 80s, her first museum retrospective, Gleefully Askew, is currently at Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento and features paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints from her six decade career. This exhibition is on view until 11/29/26.

For more information, Artforum recently published a great profile of Nilsson in their Summer issue.

Pennsylvania Murals- Jim Houser in Philadelphia

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Collage, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture, Street Art
Aug 202026
 

Philadelphia artist Jim Houser created this mural, Wide Open, in 2019 for Mural Arts Philadelphia.

From Mural Arts:

Wide Open by artist Jim Houser features a design that speaks directly to the artist’s view of Philadelphia. Located in the Northern Liberties neighborhood, the mural’s themes include the concept of brotherly love, family and friends, a love of skateboarding and music, and the complex interaction of danger and beauty. The struggle of loss, hope and pride in where one lives intertwine in this striking mural.

His mixed media paintings, seen below, were also recently on view at Philadelphia’s Paradigm Gallery.

Work by Jim Houser at Paradigm Gallery in May of this year

You can find his most recent work on Instagram.

Mary Heilmann (1940-2026)

 Art, Artists, Ceramic Art, Conceptual Art, Design, Furniture, Painting / Painters, Printmaking, Sculptors / Sculpture
Aug 172026
 

“Surprise”, 2012, Oil on canvas. (Photo by Thomas Müller) Image courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Installation view of “Mary Heilmann: Long Line” 2025 at Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, On wall: “Long Line, 2025”; “Monochrome Chairs”, 2015; “April Chairs”, 2025. Photograph by Ron Amstutz

“Mode O’Day”, 1991, Oil on canvas, Image courtesy of 303 Gallery

Artist Mary Heilmann passed away on Friday, at 86. Heilmann started her career working in sculpture, but in the early 1970s shifted to making the paintings she would become known for. The influence of sculpture never left entirely though. She returned to making ceramic pieces, which sometimes accompanied her paintings, and began designing her signature chairs, in the early 2000s.

For more about the artist, Art21 has a few videos on their site, including the one below in which she discusses her work, inspirations, and the importance of the titles she uses.

For a deeper dive into Heilmaann’s life and career, including her childhood and education in California, check out Matt Creed’s excellent 2023 documentary Waves, Roads, & Hallucinations.

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