Martha Armstrong
April Exhibitions: April 4 - 27
May Exhibitions: May 2 - 23
Gallery Hours: Wed - Sat, 10 - 5 pm
We are moving!
Dear Gross McCleaf community,
We’re delighted to announce that in June, the Gallery will be relocating to the Manayunk neighborhood of Philadelphia, in the Mill Studios - just off Main Street at the Belmont exit from I-76.
This new location meets the moment in today’s shifting art market while being beneficial for GMG, our artists, and loyal clients. At its 3rd site in 55 years, Gross McCleaf will continue providing a comfortable, convenient setting to engage with your favorite art & artists and will now include free and easy parking!
Final in-person shows at our 16th Street space will conclude Thursday May 23rd, while programming will resume in Manayunk post-Labor Day. We’ll remain open for business, both online and for in-person appointments through the summer, while we prepare our new physical space for an exciting fall program and reception.
Meanwhile, stay tuned for upcoming announcements regarding the remainder of our spring show calendar through April and May, and SAVE THE DATE for our open house moving celebration on Saturday, May 18th ~ as we say “thank you” to our legacy center-city outpost and look forward together to our new home.
I’m filled with pride for all we’ve accomplished over these last several years and humbled by the support and encouragement from the broad GMG community. I’m grateful to my team, to our wonderful artists for their partnership, and to our clients for your continued support and patronage.
All the best,
Rebecca Segall, Director
Gross McCleaf Gallery
Blue Shelves With Self Portrait, 50″ x 48″, Oil On Linen
Scott Noel: Apples of Pomona
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to present Apples of Pomona, an exhibition of new works by Scott Noel showcasing a vibrant array of new oil paintings and several acrylic and pastel works on rag board. Each painting is alive with Noel’s spirited intention to, “vary and reconfigure painting’s visual eloquence to express the beauty of the world”. While the small to medium-sized paintings range in subject from the nude to still-life and landscape, the exhibition is anchored by three monumental, multi-panel figure compositions that demonstrate Noel’s devotion to layered narratives, sophisticated color mixing and his signature painterly touch. These large-scale pieces draw on the themes and archetypes of ancient to contemporary times, masterfully transforming everyday neighborhood scenes into settings where the grand narratives of Western drama unfold.
In Apples of Pomona, two of Noel’s largest paintings feature scenes from the basketball court, using the sport’s inherent rhythm and movement as metaphors for broader human interactions. Complex and enthralling, Parker St. Shootaround, Hippomenes and Atalanta, measures over six feet tall and thirteen feet wide and depicts an impossible number of games unfolding simultaneously on a single court. This work, titled after the mythic race between the swift-footed Atalanta and her suitor Hippomenes, offers an allegory for the playful, yet competitive, dynamics of modern relationships.
Comfort, 53.5″ x 44″, Mixed Media
Mickayel Thurin: Frame of Mind
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to present Frame of Mind, a new body of collaged and tufted textile paintings by Mickayel Thurin. A new visual strategy has recently emerged from Thurin’s work wherein she combines intimate elements from the personal sphere, such as clothing, blankets, and soft craft materials, to create profoundly felt and vulnerable portraits. By depicting deeply personal concepts, Thurin creates pathways for connection and platforms for conversations around subjects that might otherwise be seen as private, sensitive or even taboo.
Thurin draws directly from her life as a first-generation Haitian American woman living with her young family in the United States, saying, “I’ve always made work based on emotions, but once the work became more intimate and expressive, it became illustrations of emotions. I find the emotions connect people to the work and to our shared experiences.” It is through these illustrations that broader demographic groups such as Black Americans, young working mothers, those who’ve experienced intergenerational trauma, or who struggle with self-acceptance, can find sympathetic and meaningful connections. Furthermore, each portrait has the ability to represent a larger collective sharing, whether it be of maternal peace, the mending ability of a self-soothing mantra or the cathartic power of a guttural scream.
Heidi Leitzke, Garden Path, 16″ x 12″, Thread And Acrylic On Linen
Short & Sweet IV ~ March 21- April 27
Gross McCleaf is pleased to present Short & Sweet IV, a pair of mini-exhibitions featuring works by Marilyn Holsing and Heidi Leitzke. These southeastern Pennsylvania-based painters focus on the investigation and narrative possibilities of botanicals.
Oil and gouache artist Marilyn Holsing depicts anthropomorphized arrangements that convey their distinct personalities through form and gesture. Flowers are posed in precarious positions, emphasizing strength and persistence. Her seemingly corporeal subjects huddle humorously in vulnerable vignettes, some beaming with pride, while others appear to droop in sorrow. Their leaves stretch and strain as they tenaciously grasp onto neighboring stems, reinforcing the growing tangle.
While Holsing’s colors and textures accurately depict the delicate, natural beauty of her plants, there are alluring details throughout that lean into the delightfully grotesque. Thick meaty petals undulate around the stamin like a group of twisting earthworms, and dry stringy tendrils hang from organic growths like curious cilia. Many of the groupings flourish despite being held within tiny wicker baskets and pans, surviving on impossible, sloping hillsides. In addition to a bit of awkwardness, Holsing’s persevering flowers conjure feelings of affinity and compassion. They are the antiheroes of a winding adventure through an immersive paradise.
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Scott Noel, painting in his studio
Scott Noel featured in John Thornton's film Scott Noel, Painting Ideas
Video Description: "Scott Noel and I talk about his 44 year career as a figurative painter based in Philadelphia." - John Thornton
Mickayel Thurin pictured at Gross McCleaf's Opening Reception for 'Mickayel Thurin: Frame of Mind'
Mickayel Thurin featured in John Thornton's film Mickayel Thurin, Adding Joy to Art
Video Description: "One of my most enjoyable video projects was a movie I made 2 years ago about Mickayel Thurin and her artistic family. So it’s great to catch up with them again and see Micka’s dazzling new show at Gross McCleaf. Her inventiveness with composition and materials is peerless. The joyfulness of her art is hard won, and to me, that’s why it’s so profoundly moving. Micka understands all too well that the world is not without sorrow, and her quest for joy and beauty is like a prayer. Her show will be up through April 27, 2024," - John Thornton.
Citizens Bank Park pictured during Max Mason's behind-the-scenes tour with Gross McCleaf
Artist Max Mason Takes GMG Out to the Phillies Game at Citizens Bank Park
Max Mason shares his large-scale paintings on location at Citizens Bank Park in this 7 minute video. Mason was commissioned by the Philadelphia Phillies to create two series of works for the ballpark when it was constructed 20 years ago. Hear more about Mason's process during the creation of the works. Like many contemporary artists, Max Mason has fruitfully combined his passion for artmaking with an ardent personal interest. Mason's favorite subject is Major League Baseball with paintings and drawings depicting America’s favorite pastime. Illustrating key moments of the game and the energetic movements of particular players alike, his dynamic compositions arise from stadium seats to capture the excitement and pleasure of a sunny afternoon in the stands.
“Painting beautiful people and things in beautiful light, indeed finding almost every moment of perception a candidate for this beauty, I wonder if a certain fidelity to the ever-renewed ripening of an orchard through all its necessary stages of metamorphosis isn’t an analogy for the privilege of painting.”
- Scott Noel, The Apples of Pomona, 2024 catalog
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to present Apples of Pomona, an exhibition of new works by Scott Noel showcasing a vibrant array of new oil paintings and several acrylic and pastel works on rag board. Each painting is alive with Noel’s spirited intention to, “vary and reconfigure painting’s visual eloquence to express the beauty of the world”. While the small to medium-sized paintings range in subject from the nude to still-life and landscape, the exhibition is anchored by three monumental, multi-panel figure compositions that demonstrate Noel’s devotion to layered narratives, sophisticated color mixing and his signature painterly touch.
Pete Sparber talks with Elizabeth Johnson, a longtime Artblog contributor, about her solo exhibit at Gross McCleaf Gallery. Titled 'The Cost of Sleep', the show presents large and small oil paintings that are dreamscapes of tornado-like swirlings, very beautiful, energetic, and a little terrifying. Johnson says she is against a narrative thread in her works and will adjust her canvases to erase story lines, saying, "If I put objects together that look like they're going to suggest a narrative, I'll get rid of one thing and search for a fringe subject...I destroy a lot of what I paint.” Enjoy this interesting interview! The show's up through March 30. - Description from theartblog.org
Sharon Garbe: Your whirlwind works have no beginning or end. You put images, which are stand-ins for experience, through a battery of digital ocean waves and vortexes to see how they fare. Then you reclaim the pixels and submit them to a different kind of fluidity. You play with space, time, memory, repetition and change, possibilities, and meaning. Could a subtitle for your show be “We Are an Unfinished Story”?
Elizabeth Johnson: Definitely. Humans have time and hope, and it’s logical to pose indefinite, multiple endings. It’s also logical to treat photographs as undulating surfaces or sculpture.
If I have anything to add to visual storytelling, it’s that I’m comfortable gathering random, transmuted subjects to make a dreamworld from simultaneous choices.
Gross McCleaf is pleased to present Short & Sweet IV, a pair of mini-exhibitions featuring works by Marilyn Holsing and Heidi Leitzke. These southeastern Pennsylvania-based painters focus on the investigation and narrative possibilities of botanicals.
Oil and gouache artist Marilyn Holsing depicts anthropomorphized arrangements that convey their distinct personalities through form and gesture. Flowers are posed in precarious positions, emphasizing strength and persistence. Her seemingly corporeal subjects huddle humorously in vulnerable vignettes, some beaming with pride, while others appear to droop in sorrow. Their leaves stretch and strain as they tenaciously grasp onto neighboring stems, reinforcing the growing tangle.
While Holsing’s colors and textures accurately depict the delicate, natural beauty of her plants, there are alluring details throughout that lean into the delightfully grotesque.
