PRESS RELEASE
Gallery Hours: Fri & Sat, 11 am – 4 pm, or by appointment
info@grossmccleaf.com, 215-665-8138
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Leigh Werrell: For the Moment
September 12 - October 18
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to present For the Moment, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Leigh Werrell. Werrell’s newest works reflect her long-held fascination with the potent realm between clarity and uncertainty, exploring thresholds of domestic intimacy and public space, continuity and change, presence and disappearance. Scenes unfold through layered observation, imagination, and improvisation, at times anchored by a reference snapshot or conjured from memory and reenactment. Through these paintings, Werrell balances tonal depth and color with quiet narrative suggestion, offering moments that feel both personal in scope and widely resonant, suspended ‘for the moment’.
Werrell’s practice begins in the rhythms of daily life: a fleeting glow through window blinds, the gleam of liquid in a glass, or the dark mass of a family table. “Mystery is always more compelling than resolution,” she reflects. “Ambiguity gives the viewer an opportunity to immerse themselves in the color, light, and texture of a painting and discover hints of narrative with which to create their own story.” Each painting emerges as a meditation on atmosphere and transition, where light and shadow register the lingering presence of what has been and the anticipation of what is to come.
Motherhood, family life, and the solitude of night emerge as recurring themes. In works such as Nursery and Night Nursing, Werrell draws from the haze of new parenthood—tender, tired, joyful moments captured in luminous lavender and blue. Night Nursing, viewed from above, situates the artist with her infant alongside her sleeping partner, balancing intimacy with distance to convey both the weight and devotion of care. “Even with a wonderful partner, caring for an infant is an overwhelmingly isolating and exhausting task,” Werrell notes. “Still, there is so much love and devotion in the act of caring for our baby,”.
Other paintings expand outward into barrooms, city streets, and window-lit interiors, where ambiguity and recognition meet. In works such as Crepe Cart and Ortleib’s, reflective surfaces and carefully tuned contrasts establish an atmosphere that is both luminous and enigmatic. Balancing color and tone is central to Werrell’s process, often turning to the neutrality of grey to anchor her compositions. “My husband is a bass guitar player and I think using grey is similar to including that instrument in a band: most people tend to pay more attention to the lead guitarist or singer, but the bass is always there in the background keeping the rhythm and enhancing the other parts to allow them to stand out in the best way possible.” Light, too, often functions as a subject, whether pressing against the darkness in Street Lamp and Little Window or shifting mood across the surface of Fizz.
Together, the paintings in For the Moment mark a threshold in Werrell’s practice, balancing her roles as painter and new mother while remaining true to her longstanding interest in color-driven, open-ended narratives and spaces. “As these details come forward, the painting leads me to find a new atmosphere, mood, or emotion,” she says, “a process that I hope is shared as the viewer finds their way through the work.”
Leigh Werrell is an artist living and working in Philadelphia. Recently the subjects of her paintings include her experiences as mother to a one-year-old, views of her Mount Airy neighborhood, everyday scenes with her family, and views of and through the windows of her home. She is originally from Durham, NC and came to Philadelphia for an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Maren Less: Passing Through.
September 12 - October 18
Gross McCleaf Gallery is delighted to present Passing Through., its first solo exhibition of paintings by Maren Less.
Less’s imaginative canvases teem with symbolic imagery including cars, trees, animals, ladders, fruits, buildings, houses, and planes. These layered compositions form dreamlike narratives that mirror the complexities of lived experience, where subconscious impulses and external realities converge. “Much of my work originates in sketchbooks,” Less notes. “I prefer a process that moves intuitively from impulse to hand to paper to canvas, allowing the work to unfold in its own way.”
For Less, painting is both visual and poetic. Each completed work is paired with a poem, offering an additional entry point into her inner world. The texts function less as captions than as reflections, drawing out meaning from the imagery and deepening its resonance. “The poem relies on the painting, but the painting doesn’t rely on the poem,” she explains. “Maybe that’s the essence of capturing an inner landscape: it’s used to being unseen, and it could slip back into invisibility with almost no effort.”
Recurring motifs such as animals mid-hunt, airplanes in descent, and figures in ambiguous roles surface throughout the exhibition, shifting in scale and meaning. Characters seem to emerge from the subconscious, playing minor roles in scenes without central plots, echoing the nonlinear logic of dreams. “Even in the writing that accompanies the work, there is no hierarchy, no heroes or villains,” Less says. “They aren't part of one cohesive story, but they carry echoes of many… each character might represent something we all experience: a fear, a hope, a dream, or a role we find ourselves in. Sometimes we’re at the center of that feeling, sometimes we’re far from it. The characters shift like we do, sometimes leading, sometimes fading into the background.”
Through these dynamic and layered compositions, Less creates imaginative spaces that balance chaos and order, density and openness. The result is a body of work that is playful and unsettling, whimsical and profound, and deeply engaged with the dialogue between inner and outer worlds.
Maren Less is a visual artist whose acrylic paintings capture the untamed energy of an active inner life. Her work explores subconscious spaces, inviting viewers into dynamic, layered compositions that blend intuition with structure. Maren earned her MFA from the Tyler School of Art in 2019 and holds a post-baccalaureate degree in Fine Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). She completed her undergraduate studies at Kenyon College, graduating with a BA in 2014. In addition to her studio practice, Maren is a dedicated educator. She has taught at the Tyler School of Art, Pennsylvania College of Art & Design, and currently teaches at Lehigh University and Penn State Abington. Through her teaching, she encourages students to explore themselves through helping them discover and articulate their unique voices. Maren also has been working in the studio of artist Dona Nelson since 2019. Maren’s work has been exhibited at Temple Contemporary in Philadelphia, Temple Rome, The Freehold Art Gallery in New Jersey, and Aramark Headquarters in Philadelphia. Her work has also been featured online at Outsider Art.