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Omar Mendoza’s Natural Pigment Paintings Radiate the Power of Ancestral Knowledge
by Aurelia Butler 26 September 2025, 20:20
“Noche obsidiana” (2025), mayan blue, mayan green, indigo blue, brazilian wood, mexican honeysuckle, jonote, zacatlaxcalli, kina, charcoal, turmeric, beet, and beeswax on handmade cotton surface. Images © Omar Mendoza, shared with permission
Omar Mendoza’s Natural Pigment Paintings Radiate the Power of Ancestral Knowledge
September 26, 2025
Art
Jackie Andres
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Since ancient times, artists and craftsmen have drawn upon natural pigments for creative use. Extracting dyes from organic sources is an art in and of itself, deeply rooted in various cultures across the historical Mesoamerican region. Although many traditional practices—like pigment harvesting—have been threatened by external factors such as colonialism, artists continue to keep these processes alive today.
Mexico City-based artist Omar Mendoza taps into the persistence of ancestral knowledge for his newest series of paintings in Serpiente Solar 〰 Noche Obsidiana, or Solar Serpent 〰 Obsidian Night, at Povos. Conjuring hues from native plants, tree bark, and flowers collected from his father’s hometown, supplemented with pigments sourced from local markets, the existence of Mendoza’s works are themselves a symbolic form of resistance.
Detail of “Lluvia florida”
Visually, the artist’s compositions evoke cosmic power and sacred rhythm. As Mendoza reaches toward the sanctity of time-honored cultural wisdom, he connects both celestial and earthly forces, depicting multitudes of intuition and insight through motifs such as stars, planetary objects, snakes, eagles, vines, and more.
Victoria Rivers’ curatorial text shares:
Omar Mendoza creates these works from a cosmovision in which everything is alive and in relationship: water, stone, plants, fire, night. In that web of sacred correspondences, painting becomes an act of reciprocity with the earth and its cycles.
Symmetry flows through several of Mendoza’s paintings, calling to the mirroring of two worlds. Nonetheless, tactile washes of pink, blue, violet, and yellow atop hand-prepared canvases sumptuously intertwine, presenting a transcendent sense of harmony across Mendoza’s series of works, calling once more to the cyclical energy that courses through them.
Serpiente Solar 〰 Noche Obsidiana opens on October 4 in Chicago. In the meantime, you can find more from Mendoza on Instagram.
“Espejo obsidiana” (2025), mayan blue, mayan green, indigo blue, brazilian wood, mexican honeysuckle, jonote, zacatlaxcalli, kina, charcoal and blue wood on handmade cotton surface
Detail of “Camino a casa”
Detail of “Invocación”
“Lluvia florida” (2025), mayan blue, mayan green, indigo blue, brazilian wood, mexican honeysuckle, zacatlaxcalli, kina, charcoal, turmeric, beet and beeswax on handmade cotton surface
“Serpiente de jade” (2025), mayan blue, mayan green, indigo blue, brazilian wood, mexican honeysuckle, jonote, kina and turmeric on handmade cotton surface
“Eclipse” (2025), mayan blue, mayan green, indigo blue, brazilian wood, mexican honeysuckle, kina, turmeric and obsidian on handmade cotton surface
“Cantares” (2025), mayan blue, mayan green, indigo blue, brazilian wood, mexican honeysuckle, zacatlaxcalli, kina, charcoal, turmeric, beet, alder and beeswax on handmade cotton surface
“Cielo roto” (2025), mayan blue, mayan green, brazilian wood, mexican honeysuckle, zacatlaxcalli, kina, charcoal, turmeric, beet and beeswax on handmade cotton surface
Detail of “Eclipse”
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Millo and Seth Globepainter Trade Concrete for Canvas in ‘Beyond’
by Aurelia Butler 26 September 2025, 16:00
Images © the artists, shared with permission
Millo and Seth Globepainter Trade Concrete for Canvas in ‘Beyond’
September 26, 2025
Art
Jackie Andres
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Street artists Francesco Camillo Giorgino and Julien Malland (a.k.a. Millo and Seth Globepainter) have painted in more than fifty countries combined. In a new exhibition titled Beyond, the pair takes their expansive mural practice indoors with thirty new works and their first collaborative canvas installation.
Beyond is grounded by a vast map at the entrance of the show, charting the far-reaching and meandering paths both artists have taken across the globe. Though they’ve crossed paths before, the exhibition emphasizes their convergence once again at Goldman Global Arts Gallery, where their monumental works have been reimagined within the context of gallery walls.
Both Millo and Seth radiate a childlike wonder within their works, evoking a sense of joy and curiosity. While Millo’s compositions usually feature monochromatic figures and architectural components expressed with robust line work and bold pops of color, Seth’s pieces illustrate his signature optical illusion perspectives, executed with vibrant yet soft palettes.
Installed together, the works visually complement each other and amplify overlapping themes of surreal dreamscapes, everyday whimsy, and the power of imagination.
Beyond continues through November 16 in Miami. See more work on Millo and Seth’s respective Instagram accounts.
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In Ethereal Paintings, Calida Rawles Plunges into the Dark Depths of Water
by Aurelia Butler 19 September 2025, 16:34
“All is One” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches. All images courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London, shared with permission
In Ethereal Paintings, Calida Rawles Plunges into the Dark Depths of Water
September 19, 2025
Art
Grace Ebert
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In This Time Before Tomorrow, Calida Rawles diverges from the familiar faces—those of her daughters and chosen companions—that characterized her most recent body of work. Instead, the artist returns to rippling abstractions and bubbling textures, obscuring identifiable features with painterly gestures.
Water, for Rawles, is never neutral. In the lineage of scholars like Christina Sharpe and Saidiya Hartman, the artist considers water to be a charged site and vessel for memory. Along with references to texts by Audre Lorde, Octavia Butler, and Albert Camus, among others, she presents this philosophical grounding as a way to consider the inevitability of change and how transformation can inspire hope. “What is the artist’s role in moments of crisis?” she asks.
“Refraction” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 x 2 inches
Mixing her hyperrealistic style with surreal distortions, Rawles always begins with a photo session before turning to the canvas. In this stage, she conjures moments of ambiguity. Glimmering undulations and bubbles cloud the figures’ bodies, while the reflective surface creates the illusion of a double and two forms bleeding into one another. Whether barely breaching the water’s surface or plunging into a pool, the figures appear suspended in a brief moment, their liquid surroundings embracing their relaxed limbs.
Rawles gravitates toward chiaroscuro in these paintings, rendering deep, murky waters in bold acrylic. This dark color palette is also a metaphor for the current moment. She says:
Personally, I’m grappling with the fractures within the American mythos—once rooted in the promises of democracy, inclusion, and justice. Today, that dream feels increasingly elusive. The melting pot that was once a symbol of unity now cracks under the weight of deportations; truth has become subjective; and justice feels subverted. Amidst this cultural disorientation, I find myself untethered—aware of tectonic shifts beneath both my personal and collective foundations.
This Time Before Tomorrow is on view through September 27 at Lehmann Maupin London.
“A Balance of Dawn” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 x 2 inches
“When Time Carries” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 72 x 96 inches
“Through Fury and Beyond Reason” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 x 2 inches
“Musing” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60 x 2 inches
Installation view of ‘This Time Before Tomorrow.’ Photo by Lucy Dawkins
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Surreal Narratives Unfurl Between Animals in Laura Catherwood’s Dreamy Paintings
by Aurelia Butler 15 September 2025, 18:00
“Flying Lesson (Dusk).” All photos by Matt Wenc. Images courtesy of the artist and Vertical Gallery, shared with permission
Surreal Narratives Unfurl Between Animals in Laura Catherwood’s Dreamy Paintings
September 15, 2025
ArtIllustrationNature
Kate Mothes
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Curious foxes, sleepy fawns, and daring mice are just a few of the woodland creatures that populate Laura Catherwood’s dreamy drawings and paintings. Working primarily in graphite and oil, she situates recognizable animals into unexpected and fantastical situations in illustrations that “explore the inner emotional landscape while simultaneously soothing the viewer,” she says.
It often takes a moment to comprehend the scope of each of Catherwood’s scenarios. A pair of spotted frogs in “Rue,” for example, is not what it seems at first, as two heads emerge from one body, and their long tongues are both pierced with a fishing hook. And in “Inexhaustible,” a toad with an unusual, bowl-like back full of water provides a tiny oasis for a troupe of flying fish.
“Inexhaustible”
Catherwood is interested in the power of illustration to channel feelings, questions, and experiences that may be challenging or revolve around grief. Her scenarios are surreal and even a little cryptic, yet we’re invited to witness intimate, affecting, and enigmatic narratives that prompt curiosity and wonder.
A couple of these works are currently on view alongside Jerome Tiunayan and Joseph Renda Jr. in The Scenic Route at at Vertical Gallery, which runs through September 27 in Chicago.
Catherwood is also currently working on a series of nine small murals as part of a public outreach project about invasive species, plus a small body of work related to species found in Upstate New York, where she’s soon moving. And she’s also preparing for two solo exhibitions next year. See more on the artist’s website and Instagram.
“Rue”
“Stirring”
“Listen”
“Flying Lesson (Dawn)”
“The Bridge”
“Hard to Find”
“Everything Happens for the First Time”
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Joseph Renda Jr.’s Surreal Trompe-l’œil Portals Frame Esoteric Scenes
by Aurelia Butler 12 September 2025, 13:00
“Growth/Process.” All images courtesy of the artist and Vertical Gallery, Chicago, shared with permission
Joseph Renda Jr.’s Surreal Trompe-l’œil Portals Frame Esoteric Scenes
September 12, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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In the paintings of Joseph Renda Jr., trompe-l’œil windows, arches, and blue skies meet in surreal settings. His René Magritte-esque canvases celebrate nature and the uncanny, sometimes infused with a tinge of humor, to encourage an appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things. Instead of focusing on the subconscious, like the 20th-century Surrealists, Renda emphasizes elements of our surroundings—birds, gardens, flowers, and expansive landscapes—which nevertheless possess rich symbolism.
Birds, for example, have traditionally represented freedom, optimism, and connections to spiritual worlds. Plants, storms, tools, and myriad other motifs carry their own inherent meanings, from notions of growth and transformation to balance and justice. Situated within windows and archways, we’re invited to peer into—but not quite enter—an esoteric world. And the blue sky sometimes cracks to reveal what may, in fact, be a façade with who-knows-what beyond what we can see.
“Rough Waters”
Renda’s recent stone arch pieces are included in a three-person show at Vertical Gallery, The Scenic Route, alongside Jerome Tiunayan and Laura Catherwood. The exhibition runs through September 27 in Chicago. Find more on Renda’s website and Instagram.
“The Sky Is Falling”
“Memory”
“Where the Day Meets the Night”
“Passing By”
“Stop and Let the Roses Smell You”
“Perspective”
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Sergiu Ciochinǎ’s ‘Blue Series’ Explores Personal Memories, Dreams, and Moods
by Aurelia Butler 10 September 2025, 16:00
“Self-Portrait with a Swan.” All images courtesy of the artist, shared with permission
Sergiu Ciochinǎ’s ‘Blue Series’ Explores Personal Memories, Dreams, and Moods
September 10, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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Cradling tiny homes, seated amid flowers, or asleep and dreaming in a garden, the figures in Sergiu Ciochinǎ’s paintings rest and interact in moments of poignant solitude and reverie. The artist’s Blue Series is a visual collection of his own memories, reflections, and moods, which he elaborates into atmospheric and sometimes fantastical canvases.
“For me, blue is the color of gentle melancholy, profound calm, and also a hidden hope,” Ciochinǎ says. Titles like “Don’t Eclipse Me” and “You Are Your Own Home” tap into our deep-seated desire for connection and a sense of belonging. They also hint at the nature of individuality within the context of our relationships with others, navigated in a series of dreamy scenes.
“You Are Your Own Home”
Ciochinǎ also creates glowing landscapes that capture building facades at sunrise or sun-dappled streets of historic European towns. Time and light play a significant role in his portrayals of anonymous figures, too, illuminating their skin with glowing details or situating them in the shadow of floral arrangements or verdant, dusky gardens.
The figures’ positions and blue tone nod slightly to Pablo Picasso’s Blue Period around 1901 to 1904, when the artist’s earlier, more realistic depictions of people and domestic spaces were largely rendered in blue and blue-green tones to underscore themes of despair and turmoil. For Ciochinǎ, dreams and emotions center in his mystical compositions.
“I wanted each canvas to convey a kind of breath, a calm vibration, almost musical,” the artist says. “Blue, for me, becomes a meeting space between reality and dream, between memory and the present—a bridge that invites the viewer to pause and contemplate.”
Ciochinǎ is currently preparing for a solo exhibition in Paris next year, which will include work expanding on the Blue Series. See more on his website, and follow updates on Instagram.
“Morning”
“Nowhere”
“Don’t Eclipse Me”
“Silent Garden”
“You Will Bloom Without Me”
“Pick a Flower, or Even Me”
“When the Flowers Weep, We Dream—So Beautiful, So Unaware”
“Nights of June”
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Maud Madsen’s Oil Paintings Explore Childhood Memories, Daydreams, and Nesting
by Aurelia Butler 8 September 2025, 15:13
“Snow Fort” (2025), oil on linen, 78 x 90 inches. Photos by JSP Art Photography. All images courtesy of the artist and Half Gallery, shared with permission
Maud Madsen’s Oil Paintings Explore Childhood Memories, Daydreams, and Nesting
September 8, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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Brooklyn-based artist Maud Madsen delves into what it means to find comfort, inspiration, and security in our domestic spaces. Her current solo exhibition, Dweller at Half Gallery, taps into the vast realm of memory as she depicts herself building structures in the snow or pillow forts from couch cushions—activities we often associate with kids’ unbridled creativity and ingenuity. They are also shelters.
Evocative of children’s book author Chris Van Allsburg’s dramatic and mysterious illustrations in acclaimed titles like Jumanji, Polar Express, and The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, Madsen often centers the living room or bedroom—places that define relaxation and dreaming—as places where voyages of the imagination take place.
“Twin Beds (Blanket Fort)” (2025), oil on linen, 78 x 110 inches
For Madsen, a similar approach shapes her renditions of childhood activities that highlight nostalgic and engrossing activities like building blanket forts or playing with a 1980s-era Fisher Price farm set. Deep shadows, enigmatic settings, and uncanny situations converge in the artist’s alluring and mysterious oil paintings.
“Because all of the artist’s compositions deal with childhood memories, Maud is also quite literally dwelling on the past,” the gallery says. “The double meaning of her show title is a kind of trick mirror, or maybe force-multiplier, concentrating our attention on the spaces (many self-created) that her figures occupy.”
Lit perhaps by a distant porch light or the moon shining in through a window, the artist’s recent paintings are set at night, suggesting these moments may be dreams or even the result of insomnia. Nighttime can be seen as symbolic of both an ending and a transition into something new, like that of adolescence to adulthood. Madsen’s compositions also examine the notion of “nesting,” in which we carefully organize and curate our domestic spaces to define our tastes and needs in a way that feels comfortable, autonomous, and safe.
Dweller continues through October 2 in New York City. See more on the artist’s website and Instagram.
“Den” (2025), oil on linen, 30 x 24 inches
“Canopy” (2025), oil on linen, 30 x 24 inches
“Lights Out” (2025), oil on linen, 60 x 48 inches
“Night Shift” (2025), oil on linen, 60 x 48 inches
“Heavy Snow” (2025), oil on linen, 60 x 48 inches
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Mystery Abounds in Angela Burson’s Engimatic Paintings
by Aurelia Butler 5 September 2025, 18:28
“Disconnected” (2025), acrylic on panel, 9 x 12 inches. All images courtesy of Hashimoto Contemporary, shared with permission
Mystery Abounds in Angela Burson’s Engimatic Paintings
September 5, 2025
Art
Grace Ebert
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What do the objects we surround ourselves with say about who we are? For Angela Burson, the shirt we pluck from the closet in the morning and the drink we sip with dinner are especially engaging insights into personal and familial identities.
The artist, who is based in Savannah, often begins with old photographs and re-interprets vintage fashions, tile patterns, and household items in acrylic. She tends to skew proportions and perspectives, achieving a surreal style intensified by her signature crops and headless figures. A vivid, old-fashioned palette of yellow, baby blue, and pale, dusty rose characterizes the mysterious scenes, which peer into intimate moments rife with intrigue.
“Western Martini” (2025), acrylic on panel, 12 x 16 inches
In “Taking Notes,” for example, we see two people sitting at a table, the suited figure scribbling on a pad of paper while another grabs for an olive martini. We’re left unsure of whether these notes reflect an investigation into an illicit event or chronicle a more legitimate (and seemingly less likely) cause. There’s also the nefarious cord-cutter in “Disconnected,” a piece in which a black rotary phone is sure to become an object of inquiry.
Of course, not all of Burson’s paintings appear to catch a bad actor. Her characteristic crops also zoom in on a delicate pair of sheer, polka-dotted socks or slender hands grasping a cocktail glass. The artist’s most recent body of work, Analog Conditions, depicts “artificially created situations (that) mimic real-world circumstances.”
Recurring motifs like suitcases and beloved pets allude to themes of liberation and companionship, although Burson continues to leave us puzzled: Why, for example, is there an open pill box next to an unattended pup? And what spurred the adoption of an adorable calico kitten? While ambiguous and inconclusive, Burson’s paintings prompt us, as a statement says, “to question the existential meaning of it all.”
Analog Conditions is on view from September 6 to 27 at Hashimoto Contemporary in New York City. Explore more from Burson on her website and Instagram.
“Taking Notes” (2025), acrylic on linen, 31 1/2 x 40 7/8 x 3/4 inches
“Olive and Pillbox” (2025), acrylic on linen, 16 x 20 inches
“Yellow Shoes” (2025), acrylic on panel, 12 3/4 x 9 3/4 inches
“Vintage Taupe” (2025), acrylic on panel, 9 x 12 inches
“Yellow Bow” (2025), acrylic on panel, 9 x 12 inches
“Ozark Magic” (2025), acrylic on panel, 14 x 14 inches
“Patches” (2025), acrylic on linen, 60 x 40 x 1 1/2 inches
“Pencil” (2025), acrylic on linen, 40 x 40 x 3/4 inches
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painting

More stories

Omar Mendoza’s Natural Pigment Paintings Radiate the Power of Ancestral Knowledge

Millo and Seth Globepainter Trade Concrete for Canvas in ‘Beyond’

In Ethereal Paintings, Calida Rawles Plunges into the Dark Depths of Water

Surreal Narratives Unfurl Between Animals in Laura Catherwood’s Dreamy Paintings

Joseph Renda Jr.’s Surreal Trompe-l’œil Portals Frame Esoteric Scenes

Sergiu Ciochinǎ’s ‘Blue Series’ Explores Personal Memories, Dreams, and Moods

Maud Madsen’s Oil Paintings Explore Childhood Memories, Daydreams, and Nesting

Mystery Abounds in Angela Burson’s Engimatic Paintings

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