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January 2024
“New World” An Exhibit of Michael Abrams paintings
Sears Peyton Gallery 210 11th Ave. suite 802
January 11th to Frebruary 10th 2024
July 2023
Work included in group exhibit “Plein Air”
Sears-Peyton Gallery 210 11th Ave STE 802, New York, NY 10001
July 13th - August 11 2003
April 2023
Work included in the Dallas Art Fair
Sears-Peyton Gallery Booth C2
April 20th - April 23rd at the fashion Industry Gallery
Chemung Dusk 48” x 48”
January 2023
Work included in group exhibit “The Universal Vibration” at Sears Peyton Gallery
January 12th to February 18th 2023
Sears Peyton Gallery
210 11th Ave. NYC 10001
“Stratton Hue” 60” x 60” oil on canvas
July 2022
Work included in Group Exhibit at Beth Urdang Gallery
July 20th to September 24th, 2021
Beth Urdang Gallery
15 Central Street, Wellesley, MA
January 2022
Artist Talk: Michael Abrams
January 6, Thursday, 7 p.m.
Artist Michael Abrams virtually welcomes visitors to his Jamaica, Vermont, studio for a conversation about his installation Arcadia Rediscovered as well as about his work in general.
Abrams works primarily in oil on canvas, panel, and prepared paper. Though rooted in Luminism, his idealized landscapes evoke fresh responses to touchstone experiences with Nature while giving the perception of something otherworldly. Color, light, water, clouds, and sky invite us to participate in dreamlike, romantic color fields, enticing a backward glance and at the same time tugging us forward. The viewer is often introduced to the picture plane as if hovering slightly above ground, adding to the sense of detachment from reality. Substance dissipates into atmosphere, emphasizing misty ambiance over earthly terrain. These landscapes exist entirely in the mental space of nostalgic recall.
The abundantly varied vistas of the Green Mountains, the physicality of the terrain, the unique quality of light, and the richness of atmosphere have become integral to Abrams’ work. These experiences are layered upon bucolic images of the sprawling fertile land, scenic beauty, and awe-inspiring sunsets of his childhood home, perched above the majestic greenery of the Hudson River Valley.
This event will take place via Zoom and Facebook Live. A recording will be made available here afterward.
ADMISSION: Free
October 2021
Arcadia Rediscovered
October 22, 2021, to March 5, 2022
Brattleboro Museum and Art Center
10 Vernon Street, Brattleboro, Vermont, 05301
Installation Photo by Josh Farr
This body of work revisits the 19th-century Arcadian tradition of landscape painting, which glorified manifest destiny. I bring to that tradition my profound respect for the natural world and my concern that we are on the verge of losing that world through our embrace of our dominance over nature.
The 19th-century Luminist landscape painters are among the strongest influences on my painting practice. These artists robustly and dramatically extolled the virtues of nature as man’s spiritual cathedral. Their ability to capture the breadth and scale of the natural world exemplified a sublime Arcadian ideal.
Since my move to Vermont more than a decade ago, I have been humbled by the varied vistas and their never-ending seasonal rebirth, by the striking physical character of the landscape, the unique qualities of the light, an atmosphere oscillating between crystal clear and thickly obscuring. These elements have become key in the story I am telling of my relationship with nature—a story perhaps most concerned with our letting go of the illusion that we can determine its destiny. While nature is enduring, our experience of it is but a fleeting moment.
—Michael Abrams
June 2021
Work included in “Blue; Paintings, Photographs, prints”
June 8th to July 17th, 2021
Beth Urdang Gallery
15 Central Street, Wellesley, MA
Click on image to view exhibit
December 2020
“Fall Brook” 48” x 48” in this months issue of House Beautiful
September 2020
Brattleboro Museum and At Center Benefit Auction
Sept. 4th
“Canting Light” oil on panel 17.75 “ SQ.
BMAC Benefit Auction
September 4, Friday, 9:45 a.m.
With our Spring Gala and other important fundraisers cancelled this year due to Covid-19, we are counting on a new type of benefit auction, offered in collaboration with Duane Merrill & Company Auctioneers and Appraisers, to provide essential support for BMAC’s youth and education programs in the coming school year.
All items to be auctioned off, approximately 100 in total, have been donated to BMAC for the express purpose of helping the Museum make up revenue lost due to Covid-19. They include a painting by Maurice Utrillo, a pastel and a rare limited-edition print by Wolf Kahn, an oil-on-paper painting by Emily Mason, a watercolor by Eric Aho, as well as paintings by Michael Abrams, Jim Giddings, Carolyn Enz Hack, Charlie Hunter, Julia Jensen, Gordon Jones, Mallory Lake, Stephen Lloyd, Petria Mitchell, Fiona Morehouse, James Urbaska, and many others.
Other items include a beautiful dining room table handcrafted by master Vermont furniture maker Garrett Hack, a set of six mid-century modern chairs by Danish designer Jens Risom, two room-size Persian rugs, an assortment of rare wines from Napa Valley, a pair of “art sneakers” by sculptor Andy Yoder, and much more.
A link to the auction site will be posted here by Monday, August 24.
A preview of selected items and a tutorial on how to bid online will take place via Zoom on Sunday, August 30, at 7:30 p.m.
August 24th 2020
Art Loves Company Brattleboro Museum & Art Center
Michael Abrams, Julia Jensen, and Bruce Campbell all live and make art in southern Vermont. Each of them donated work to BMAC’s September 4 online benefit auction. We chatted with them over email (the perfect social distancing medium for busy artists!) to find out what moves them to support our Museum.
To continue reading follow this link:
Art Loves Company https://www.artlovescompany.org/home/bmac-brings-the-world-to-us
February 2020
Paintings included in “2020 Landscape Exhibition” at William Baczek Fine arts, Northampton, MA
February 5th through March 14
“Rake Branch” 26” x 30”
November 2019
Pleased to announce that my painting “Steppe Brook” is included in this exhibit and fundraising event at the Bennington Museum, Bennington, VT
November 29th through December 22nd.
“Steppe Brook” 22 x 16
The Festival:
A Snowy Evening
November 29 through December 30
In 2020. Bennington Museum will present Robert Frost, "At Present in Vermont." This major exhibition, on view June 27 through December 3, 2020, will examine his life and work in the context of the landscape and culture of Bennington County from 1920-1938. Robert Frost moved to Shaftsbury, Vermont in 1920, intending to establish an apple orchard. During the 20 years he lived there, he interacted with such local cultural figures as Dorothy Canfield Fisher and Rockwell Kent and wrote some of his best-known poems, including the iconic, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
It is from the Poet Laureate's writings, perhaps his most famous, that the Museum has drawn its theme for the 2019 Festival.
A major part of this year’s seasonal celebration is the presentation of works by thirty-one regional artists who have responded to the words of Robert Frost. Their work will be on display in the Parmelee and Limric Galleries beginning November 29. These will be available in a closed-bid auction beginning November 29 through December 22 at 4 pm. The winning bid will be split with 50% going to the artist and 50% going to the Museum.
As works in the closed-bid auction become available, they will be posted here. Take a look and then stop in the museum to place your bid or write sstrano@benningtonmuseum.org. You can also fax your bid to 802-442-8305. These will be considered legal and binding bids. Bids by phone are not allowed. All bids will be opened by two people and date stamped. The person with the highest offer will be declared the winner and be contacted by December 23, 2019 for payment and to arrange a pick-up time. In the event of a tie, the bid placed first will be the winner. To avoid a tie, we urge you to bid an odd amount such as $586.54 rather than $500.
July 2019
Work included in “Summer Selections” at Beth Urdang Gallery , Boston, MA
July 18th to September 22nd 2019
“Burnt Meadow Brook” 18” x 18” oil on panel 2019
“Summer 2019” at William Baczek Fine Arts, Northampton MA
Through July and August 2019
Photo William Baczek Fine Arts
June 2019
Beth Urdang Gallery, Wellesley MA
Pop Up Showcase
Photo Beth Urdang Gallery
December 2018
My work shown at Pulse Miami this December 6th -9th by Willam Baczek Fine Arts.
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William Baczek Fine Arts is proud to announce that we will be participating in Pulse Contemporary Art Fair in Miami Beach from December 6 – 9, 2018.
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We will be showing work by Michael Abrams, Jana Brike, Jaq Chartier, El Gato Chimney, Travis Louie, Susan Mikula, Scott Prior and Eric Wert.
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Please join us this December in Miami for Pulse Miami Beach!
INDIAN BEACH PARK
4601 COLLINS AVENUE, MIAMI BEACH, FL 33140
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Photo William Baczek Fine Arts
October 2018
My Painting “Scattered Yellow” in the October Issue of Veranda.
Designer Kevin Spearman, Architect Orly Shrem. “Going The Distance” by Rob Brinkley
September 2018
“2018 LANDSCAPE EXHIBITION” at William Baczek Fine Arts, Northampton, MA
“West River Brume” 48” x 48”
Michael Abrams, West River Brume, oil on canvas, 48 x 48"
William Baczek Fine Arts, in Northampton, Massachusetts is pleased to announce the opening of the 2018 Annual Landscape Exhibition. The show will be on display from Wednesday, September 5 until Saturday, October 13, 2018. The public is invited to an opening reception with the artists on Saturday, September 8 from five to seven p.m.
This year ten artists from across the U.S. and Canada, who work in a variety of media have been invited to participate in the exhibition. The annual Landscape Exhibition addresses the preconceived notions of exactly what a landscape in art can be. Employing a variety of mediums from the traditional such as egg tempera, pastel, and oil painting to the unexpected, like carved and pigmented books.
April 2018
My Work included in Brattleboro Museum and Art Center's Spring Galla and Benefit auction to benefit the Art Center's youth and education programs. Auction Ends April 13th. Follow this link for more information and to view the auction. https://www.32auctions.com/bmac2018
July 2017
My Painting Chasing Radiance is included in "At A Languorous Pace" Opening July 6th Through August 11th.
At Sears Peyton Gallery 210 11th Avenue, suite 802, Chelsea.
"Chasing Radiance" 43" x 96" oil on canvas
October 2016
"Luscious" Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, Brattleboro, VT
October 28, 2016 - February 6, 2017
A celebration of paint, Luscious investigates the myriad ways in which artists make conscious statements of painterly intent. Fully in command of their medium, these artists believe in the beauty of paint itself. They explore and exploit its materiality, pushing technique to the edge. In some paintings the hand of the artist is evident in open, energetic brushwork and expressive mark making. In others the smooth, precise surface leaves the viewer wondering how the work was made.
Images range from figurative to purely abstract and, yes, two artists paint food—luscious, lip-licking, sugary confections. But in an exhibition devoted to the materiality of paint, abstraction reigns. Material provides both form and content. The painted surfaces vary from thin veneers to thick impasto, from lacquered caverns to gossamer veils. Paint has been brushed, daubed, sprayed, poured, or thrown. Viewing these works is not only a visual experience but also a visceral one. Without touching the paintings, we understand and respond to their tactility, and in some cases, their appeal to our other senses.
Emily Eveleth paints monumental doughnuts. She renders their sugar glaze in sheer washes of white paint atop the golden mounds, while deep pools of color ooze jelly-like from their centers. Rosalie Ripaldi Shane paints decorated cupcakes to scale, their frosted tops thick with swirls of saturated colors that would make any pastry chef proud.
The landscape painters in this exhibit approach their venerable genre in entirely different ways. Trees and an oxbow anchor Michael Abrams’s composition. His landscape, more about atmosphere than vista, appears to glow from within, as if light were gathering before us in real time. Tim Allen filters light through trees, casting it onto them by juxtaposing the colors of sky and foliage. Intersecting branches form cells where pools of paint converge to create a shimmering, saturated blue sky. Joseph Diggs uses landscape as a scaffold on which to play with paint. His abstract vista includes a hilltop, a gorge, and a body of water in a complicated composition employing many mark making techniques. Claire Sherman depicts twigs with bold, assured slashes of paint, transforming these tiny landscape fragments into the monumentality of an entire forest.
Valerie Jaudon’s work is at once spare and complex, conceptual and sensual. Curves of pure white paint meander over a mere hint of color. The starkness of white is broken only by the grooves of brushstrokes. In contrast, the work of Lauren Olitski captures the energy and passion of its making. Olitski pours, drips, spatters, brushes, and sprays paint across the surface, giving it the quality of sculptural relief.
Pouring layer after layer of color, Holton Rower makes sculpture from paint. The plasticity of his paint is reminiscent of Turkish toffee, each color retaining the stretched pattern of its flow, from pour to pool on the ground. Maureen McQuillan’s painting of undulating streams of color rippling beneath a smooth-as-glass surface suggests a freshly opened box of ribbon candy.
Free-form areas in pearlescent hues appear to bloom on the surface of Darren Waterston’s chromatically muted painting, calling to mind the shifting eddies of iridescent color in an oily puddle. By contrast, James Lecce suspends color and movement below a taut surface. Swirls of saturated cinnabar, carmine, white, and black, along with metallic-flecked gold hark back to Florentine marbled paper.
The optical effect of Daniel Hill’s wiggly-line bilateral symmetries almost overwhelms the quality of the polymer emulsion he squeezes through a cone-tipped bottle. The glossy black and translucent blue paint look like they are still wet. Mia Scheffey’s painting is a dense field of swooping brushstrokes, glancing lines, and dripping swaths. Her abstraction embodies the dance between materials and maker. It is a paean to paint and painting.
— Mara Williams, Chief Curator
October 2013
"Cool And Collected" Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC
Michael Abrams' oil on panel painting "Somerset Lake" is currently featured in "Cool and Collected", an exhibition of recent acquisitions at the Columbia Museum of Art. On view Through January 5, 2014.
"Chapel Pond" oil on panel 10" x 14"
September 2013
"A Gathered Calm" Solo Exhibition at Sears Peyton Gallery, NYC
September 12 to October 12, 2013
