Bridgette Mayer Gallery Presents:
New Talent: Six Rising Painters Exploring Landscape & Abstraction
September 1 – December 19, 2026
Artist Reception & Happy Hour: Friday, September 18th, 5:30 – 8:00pm
Philadelphia, PA - July 14, 2026. Bridgette Mayer Gallery is pleased to present New Talent: Six Rising Painters Exploring Landscape & Abstraction brings together six emerging artists from Philadelphia and across the United States whose work reimagines contemporary painting through abstraction, landscape, color, and process. Featuring paintings by Kirby Fredendall, Michele Kishita, Erin McIntosh, Ellen Soffer, Angela Warren, and Mary Zeran, the exhibition highlights a dynamic range of visual languages while revealing a shared interest in perception, memory, emotion, and material experimentation.
Working across oil, acrylic, collage, and fluid media, these artists push beyond traditional approaches to landscape and abstraction, creating immersive works that invite contemplation and emotional connection. Through layered surfaces, intuitive mark-making, luminous color palettes, and explorations of movement and space, New Talent introduces six compelling voices shaping the future of contemporary painting.
For Kirby Fredendall , landscape serves as both memory and emotional experience. Her oil paintings on acid-washed tin and canvas balance observation with abstraction, drawing viewers into serene, atmospheric spaces that evoke water, light, and reflection. Rather than depicting a specific location, Fredendall seeks to capture the “felt” experience of place through subtle color harmonies and shifting perspectives. Her luminous surfaces suggest remembered landscapes that exist somewhere between the real and the imagined, offering moments of quiet beauty and contemplation.
Michele Kishita explores the tension between the natural and the constructed through hard-edge abstraction inspired by Japanese ukiyo-e prints. Using compressed spatial relationships and a palette rooted in nature, Kishita distills landscape into essential forms and tonal structures. Light becomes both subject and guide within her compositions, filtering across layered surfaces while darker passages create pauses and interruptions that shape perception. The resulting paintings feel simultaneously architectural and atmospheric, inviting viewers into contemplative spaces that are both familiar and intangible.
The vibrant, improvisational paintings of Erin McIntosh merge biomorphic abstraction, collage, and rhythmic movement. Working primarily in water-based media, McIntosh creates dynamic compositions inspired by gardens, microscopic forms, architecture, music, and dance. Her process-driven approach begins with small visual notations that evolve intuitively through play and experimentation. Anthropomorphic shapes and lyrical gestures emerge organically, resulting in works that feel animated, musical, and emotionally resonant.
For Ellen Soffer , painting functions as a deeply intuitive and reflective practice. Her richly layered oil paintings develop through gestural mark-making, evolving associations, and an ongoing dialogue with color. Ambiguous forms hover between abstraction and figuration, allowing impressions of dreams, emotions, and memories to surface gradually through the process of painting itself. Soffer’s works resist literal interpretation, instead creating open-ended visual narratives that encourage viewers to bring their own experiences and associations into the work.
Nature also serves as a profound source of inspiration for Angela Warren , whose paintings occupy the space between realism and abstraction. Drawing from experiences in Maine and Florida, Warren translates sensory encounters with light, color, and landscape into layered atmospheric compositions. Familiar imagery such as flowers and natural forms provide entry points into paintings that ultimately seek to convey emotional states and embodied sensations rather than direct representation. Her work captures fleeting moments of stillness and recognition, offering viewers a sense of calm and connection to the natural world.
Mary Zeran approaches abstraction through process, movement, and fluidity. Painting on transparent polyester film with fluid acrylics, Zeran allows pigment to slide, pool, and interact unpredictably across the surface. Though rooted in spontaneity, her process demands careful control and repeated layering to achieve balance and tension within each composition. Color plays a central role in the work, generating atmosphere, emotional resonance, and movement. Inspired initially by the textile tradition of Shibori, Zeran’s paintings move beyond fabric as material to explore fabric as concept—responsive, layered, and continuously evolving.
Together, the artists in New Talent reveal the expansive possibilities of contemporary painting today. Though distinct in approach, each artist engages deeply with transformation—of landscape, memory, sensation, and material—creating works that are immersive, emotionally charged, and visually compelling. The exhibition offers audiences an opportunity to experience six emerging painters whose practices reflect the evolving language of abstraction and the enduring power of paint to communicate beyond words.
An opening reception will be held on Thursday, September 17, 2026, from 5:30 to 8:00 PM. The public is invited to attend and experience firsthand the dynamic interplay of color and form that defines New Talent.
Exhibition information: New Talent will be on view from Tuesday, September 1st to Saturday, December 19th, 2026 at Bridgette Mayer Gallery. On Friday, September 18, Bridgette Mayer Gallery will host an Artist Reception & Happy Hour from 5:30 - 8:00 pm.
Gallery information: Bridgette Mayer Gallery is free and open to the public. We are located at 709 Walnut Street, 1st Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Gallery hours are by appointment on Tuesday and regular hours Wednesday – Saturday, 10:00am – 5:00pm