The Quiet Hour

Olney Gleason is pleased to present The Quiet Hour, a group exhibition of contemporary and historical paintings and works on paper united by a shared inquiry into the act of observation. Drawing from experience, memory, or a layering of both, each artist approaches the perceivable world through a distinct pictorial vocabulary – reduction, accumulation, disintegration – ultimately conflating the sensation of looking with that of painting itself. The exhibition joins work by Jamiu Agboke, Diana Al-Hadid, Milton Avery, Paul Cezanne, Kaye Donachie, David Flaugher, Nick Goss, Elizabeth Hazan, Ian Felice, Jane Freilicher, Susumu Kamijo, Per Kirkeby, Tyler Ormsby, Ellen Siebers, and Frank Walter.

Across the exhibition, figures, landscapes, and objects become armatures for sustained investigations of light, form, color, and surface. A recurring theme is the presentation of the landscape not as a fixed image, but as an accrual of moments in time, as in the work of Jamiu Agboke, Diana Al-Hadid, Jane Freilicher or Frank Walter. Certain artists, such as Susumu Kamijo or Ellen Siebers, blur the distinction between genres, offering reflections where figure, still life, and surroundings become one. Milton Avery, Kaye Donachie, Ian Felice, and Tyler Ormsby prioritize the essence over the likeness of a subject. Other artists, such as David Flaugher, Nick Goss, Elizabeth Hazan, and Per Kirkeby blend memory and invention to express internal or imaginative worlds.