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Longyear Gallery is an artist-run cooperative, representing emerging and seasoned artists located throughout the New York State region.

  • LONGYEAR GALLERY: Neil Driscoll, Lesley A. Powell and Members’ Show 5/29-6/28/26

    NEIL DRISCOLL’S “57 NEW PAINTINGS”  and LESLEY A. POWELL’S “JUX TA POSITION”
    LONGYEAR GALLERY, MAY 29th – JUNE 28th, 2026
    OPENING RECEPTION: SATURDAY, MAY 30th from 3-5 p.m.


    Longyear Gallery of Margaretville is pleased to announce the opening of two new concurrent featured artist solo exhibitions, Neil Driscoll’s “57 New Paintings” and Lesley A. Powell’s “Jux Ta Position,” accompanied by a Longyear Members’ Group Show. Opening on Friday, May 29th, these exhibitions will run through Sunday, June 28th with the Opening Reception on Saturday, May 30th from 3-5 p.m. 

    Neil Driscoll -Harvest Acrylic 20×24

    Neil Driscoll’s solo show “57 New Paintings” continues with the figurative abstractions that have been a part of his previous work. Roads, bridges, cats and dogs, and various folk serve as the framework for the painting compositions. These paintings stress line, or color, or a combination thereof. According to Driscoll, “The large number of paintings—57–is a result of my having retired a few years ago, allowing more time for painting, exploring new color and, hopefully, being more critical of those finished images.” 

    Neil Driscoll’s early art studies were at the Memphis Academy of Art and the School of the Chicago Art Institute. His work has been shown at the Roxbury Arts Group, Gilboa Museum, West Fulton Hall, and in Cooperstown.

    Lesley A. Powell _ Unwanted Embrace_Encaustic Collage

    Lesley A. Powell’s new solo exhibition “Jux Ta Position” explores this artist’s journey from choreography to the canvas, where the spatial drama of figures on stage transforms into composed forms, images, and colors on paper and canvas with her    background as a choreographer profoundly influencing her artistic practice. As Powell notes, “Just as the placement of dancers and elements like costumes, lights, and sets create nonverbal narratives in a performance, my artwork articulates its own silent language. Rather than telling a linear story, my compositions, which are grouped in three series, “Juxtapositions in Silence,” ”Juxtapositions of Bull, and “Crisscrossed Juxtapositions,” open a space for layered emotional expression and poetic juxtapositions between figures, nature, and abstract forms.

    “Juxtapositions in Silence” reveals the artist’s journey from exploring the human form to canvas with the spatial drama of figures on stage transformed into composed forms, images, and colors on paper and canvas. “Juxtapositions of Bull” combines the images of people falling, reflecting Powell’s travels in Nepal and her visual expression of dealing with our times, springing from Powell’s original drawings of people falling from a mechanical bull, a metaphor rich with tension, uncertainty, and vulnerability. Capturing the raw expressions of those in mid-fall, the artist channels a sense of helplessness that resonates powerfully in today’s world. “Crisscrossed Juxtapositions” reflects Powell’s use of collage as a liberating technique that has expanded her creative horizons. “Through layering images and color in innovative ways,” says Powell, “I have created dynamic compositions that draw the viewer into complex visual relationships. Sometimes complementing these collages are delicate prints on rice paper, an element that introduces a new sense of translucency.” The entire exhibition reveals Powell’s fascination with crisscrossing space and how backgrounds, objects, and figures converse visually within a composition. 

    Lesley A. Powell’s lifelong interest and involvement in various forms of art and choreography have most recently involved a continuation of her art studies at the National Academy of Art and the Arts Students League with Kamila Talbot for watercolor and with Frank O’Cain.

    Future summer 2026 Longyear Gallery exhibits include two concurrent featured artists solo exhibitions by members Irina Grinevitsky and Alan Powell opening on Friday, July 3rd and running through Sunday, August 2nd, with the opening reception on Saturday, July 4th from 3-5 p.m. These exhibitions will be followed by two concurrent featured artists solo exhibitions by members Anthony Margiotta and Deborah Ruggerio, opening on Friday, August 7th and running through Sunday, September 6th, with the opening reception on Saturday, August 8th from 3-5 p.m.  All solo exhibitions are accompanied by a Longyear Gallery Members’ Group Show.

    Longyear Gallery is located Downstairs in The Commons, 785 Main Street, Margaretville. The gallery will be open from 12 a.m. – 5 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. For information, please see Longyear Gallery’s website, email the gallery at info@longyeargallery.org, or call 845.586.3270 during gallery hours.

  • Marcia Clark Paints the Edge of the World

    by Lynn Woods

    “Travel As Muse,” a group show of paintings and drawings currently on view at High Falls’ Wired Gallery, grew out of the art  tours gallery owner Sevan Melikyan has been conducting since 2018. On the last trip he organized to Istanbul three participants who happened to be artists shared their sketches with the group over dinner, which triggered an idea: “They need to show this work to the public,” he recalls thinking. The result is “Travel As Muse,” an exhibition of drawings, watercolors and acrylic and oil paintings by eight local artists who were inspired by the tours. Besides Istanbul, the destinations they sketched and painted are Paris, Venice, Sicily and Malta.

    One of the participating artists is Longyear member Marcia Clark, who contributed six paintings, including of Hagia Sophia, the harbor, and the mountainous landscape of Cappadocia (painted in sections of canvas mounted on a freestanding structure of foamcore). “The work all evolved from ink drawings done in a tiny sketchbook,” she says. “I took scads of photos, and the paintings were a balancing act between the facts and my initial strong impression recorded in the drawings.”

    Travel to far-flung places has long been integral to her practice as a painter. In 2022, she traveled to the Mediterranean and the Arctic, places she has visited multiple times. In Turkey, Greece and Italy, she painted architectural sites as well as landscapes, while in the Arctic the obvious point of interest were the glaciers and the immense expanse of uninterrupted space. Painting ice also had its appeal:  “I was interested in observing the structure of the ice and its quality of light, as well as the simplicity of a color scheme based on blue. I was also attracted to the bright dots of color in the landscape made by communities of little houses mainly belonging to the Inuit population.”

    Hagia Sofia from the Hippodrome, 10/3/25, ink drawing, 3 1/2 x 11 inches

    A residency in Upernavik in 2007 was her introduction to the region. “I flew to Greenland with a group of scientists who were on their way back to the ice sheet that covers 80% of the country, and their excitement was contagious,” she recalls. “After the residency in Upernavik, I flew to Ilulissat, where there is an ice fiord that you can just about walk to. I’ve returned to Ilulissat many times and have done paintings on site weather permitting. I usually stayed at the Kunstmuseum”—on her first visit she met the director, who offered her a residency the next year—“and had a show there in 2013.”

    Since there are no direct flights to Greenland, Marcia usually gets there via Iceland, where she’s had residencies in Reykjavik and in the north in a village that was once the country’s herring capital. “Though I’ve managed to find residencies at many places I’ve been interested in, if I’ve discovered a place where I want to set up I will look for accommodations regardless if there’s a possible residency nearby.”

    Her first close encounter with the elemental sublime was In 1971, when she was an artist in residence at the Appalachian Mountain Club’s hut at Lake of the Clouds in the Presidential Range of the White Mountains. She had to hike in with her supplies. “I do gravitate to unencumbered views,” she says. “Above the timberline I could see peak after peak, on a clear day all the way to Portland. There was arctic vegetation, and the weather was extreme. I loved it up there!”

    After meeting an observer of the weather station at the summit of Mount Washington, she was invited to help with the planning of a museum about the mountain. She painted the backgrounds for dioramas of the mountain’s historic sites and painted a glacier for the geology exhibition, using an illustrated book about Glacier Bay, in Alaska, as a reference as well as sketches made by Frederic Church, which were in the archives of the Cooper Hewitt Museum.  

    Marcia had previously developed an appreciation of Thomas Cole after moving part time to New Paltz in the late 1960s and discovering the same landscape he had painted 150 years before. “I saw how beautifully and poetically he studied nature in his sketches and how important it was to the outcome,” she says. “It made me ask myself, are you looking? Well, look deeper!” She retraced the 19th-century artist’s travels in the Catskills and White Mountains and wrote about it in an article published in Smithsonian Magazine.

     Hagia Sofia from the Hippodrome, Triptych, 2026, oil on panel 16 x 44 inches

    Large paintings of architectural sites in Istanbul (bound for the show at Wired) and Sicily along with panoramic landscapes of immense mountain ranges, rock-ribbed cliffs along the sea, precipitous rocky peaks, and the flanks of glaciers were arranged along the walls and shelves of her skylit studio on the second floor of her house in Rifton during my recent visit. The loose brushstrokes, which precisely describe the convex and concave shapes defining the complex landforms, have the fluidity of watercolor, conveying the effects of light and atmosphere. Rather than take in the scene in one glance, her paintings invite the eye to travel. More paintings fill the downstairs storage room, including ones of the Mendenhall glacier done on topographical maps.  To capture the panoramic sweep of her subject, Marcia frequently paints triptychs and diptychs and sometimes extends the painting in sections outside the rectangle, as she did in a work of the Cornish cliffs that hangs in the living room (which she showed at Longyear a few months’ back).

    Glacier Surge, April 2021, oil on canvas on map transfer, 30 x 40 inches
    Blue Mosque, 2026 oil / aluminum 8 x12 in

    There are also paintings of the local woods and scenes from Riverside Park, some of which have the vertigo-inducing viewpoint of her landscapes; an early painting, from the 1980s, depicts a vertical slice of lower Manhattan viewed from the 104th floor of the World Trade Center.

    After earning a BFA from Yale, her work “was done almost entirely on site and was mostly small in scale,” she recalls. “It was always based on observation, or should I say, perception, because what you see has to be interpreted. There is the view, but you also have a point of view.” She also holds an MFA from SUNY New Paltz and is a longtime member and director of Blue Mountain Gallery.  “Travel as Muse” runs through June 21 and provides an excellent opportunity to view Marcia’s interpretations of Turkey.

    Cappadocia, 2026, oil on linen on folded foamcore,
    approximately 27 x 44 inches
    View from the Galata Tower, 2026, oil on panel 12 x 16 inches

    https://www.thewiredgallery.com

  • Mountain Eagle 5/1/26 Rob Brune

    Ray Curran Finds a Friendly Harbor at Longyear Gallery
    by Rob Brune

    Screenshot

  • Neil Driscoll’s Art Show: Fifty Seven New Paintings

    Longyear Gallery
    785 Main St. Margaretville New York
    May 29-6/28/26. Opening Saturday May 30 3 – 5 PM

    This solo show continues with the figurative abstractions that have been a part of previous work. Roads, bridges, cats and dogs, and various folk, etc. serve as the framework for the painting compositions. It wouldn’t take much to push it one step further into total abstraction, but I would miss those with whom I am familiar.  

    These paintings stress line, or color or a combination thereof. The large number of paintings (57), is a result of my having retired a few years ago, allowing more time for painting ,exploring new color and, hopefully, being more critical of those finished images.


    Early art studies were at the Memphis Academy of Art and the School of the Chicago Art Institute.
    Other than at Longyear, work has been shown at the Roxbury Arts Group, Gilboa Museum, West Fulton Hall and in Cooperstown.

  • Lesley A. Powell Solo Art Show: Jux Ta Position

    Jux Ta Positions explores the Lesley A. Powell’s journey from choreography to canvas, where the spatial drama of figures on stage transforms into composed forms, images, and colors on paper and canvas.

    Powell’s background as a choreographer profoundly influences her artistic practice. Just as the placement of dancers and elements like costumes, lights, and sets create nonverbal narratives in a performance, her artwork articulates its own silent language. Rather than telling a linear story, the compositions open a space for layered emotional expression and poetic juxtapositions between figures, nature, and abstract forms.

    Longyear Gallery
    785 Main St. Margaretville New York
    May 29-6/28/26. Opening Saturday May 30 3 – 5 PM

  • Ray Curran’s Watercolors Celebrate the Beauty of Place

    by Lynn Woods

    Ray Curran’s ability to capture the qualities of light, atmosphere, and the lay of the land of a particular place through the fluidity and spontaneity of his chosen medium is beautifully on display in “The Waterfront in Watercolor,” which runs through May 24. Six of his 10 watercolors on display depict waterfront scenes along the Hudson River, part of a series that retraced Henry Hudson’s journey from Manhattan to Kingston, while the remaining four paintings are scenes from Monhegan Island, in Maine. Curran’s color harmonies tend to be subdued, consisting of skies in pale blue washes, forested hills in gray greens, and rocky shorelines and cliffs in warm grays. His brushwork has a sprightly spontaneity reminiscent of Maurice Prendergast.

    In some works, the neutral palette is enlivened with pops of color, such as the adobe red of the large brick building and the greenish yellows of the willow trees in “The Steelhouse”; the triangular shape of the building and the crisp, rectangular forms of the white and black tugboat in the foreground contrast pleasingly with the rounded forms of the vegetation and squiggly lines in the foreground depicting the reflections on the Rondout Creek.

    Another standout is “Kingston Point,” in which the curving lines of the railroad tracks, set within the bottom dark triangular shape of the railroad bed extending from lower left to middle right, gains force with the rhythmic row of autumnal trees, which also progress to the right. The composition is anchored by the horizontal form of the ridge in the background, punctuated at left by the compact, geometrical form of the lighthouse. Two figures standing just to the left of center echo the verticals of the trees and help define the space, as well as lend a note of mystery.

    “New Harbor,” one of the Maine paintings, is the most recent work in the show and the most radical, with its simplification of forms: the shapes of the dock, with its piers and row of sheds, and the two boats are defined as negative shapes carved out from the surrounding green and gray areas, exposing the white paper. Streaks of white, also the exposed paper, activate the composition. One has a palpable sense of glimpsing the shore and boats through pelting rain, while the touches of brown, black, blue, yellow, and red adjacent to the dock, alluding to objects and architectural details, add a subtle rhythm.

    In contrast, “Monhegan Island” is monumental: the cliff extends beyond the top of the paper, which emphasizes its massiveness. Curran skillfully suggests the movement of the stones in space by varying the shapes and contrasts of various shades of gray, conveying the landform as it protrudes into the foreground and extends back into space, connecting the beach at our feet to the cliff’s silhouetted curve descending into the water in the distance. As in “Kingston Point,” the two seated figures at lower left are a human note that by extension enable us to inhabit the scene.

    Curran’s connection to the places he paints isn’t just aesthetic; it’s also tied to history and social identity. His paintings along the Hudson were shown previously at the Kingston’s Hudson River Maritime Museum, in a kind of visual diary of the sites visiting by Hudson in his journey up the river in 1609. “People don’t have a chance to see the Hudson River at all, other than from a distance,” Curran said. “They’re horrified that I kayak on the Hudson.” It bears mentioning that the numerous parks established by Scenic Hudson in the last 30 years have helped bring the public closer, an accomplishment in which Curran played a role: In his previous career as senior planner at Scenic Hudson, he proposed adding a large park to the plan for a massive housing development along the river in a former industrial site in Kingston. When the development fell through, Scenic Hudson purchased the 500-acre site, which subsequently was acquired by the state and is now the Sojourner Truth State Park. 

    After retiring from Scenic Hudson in 2009, Curran had more time to paint in his studio at Kingston’s Shirt Factory and also devoted himself to the local arts community, cofounding the city’s Midtown Arts District. Today he paints from his home in Olivebridge. He says he’s been on a quest to move away from the precision of his earlier paintings, ”to capture the mood and qualities of the assemblage,” as he puts it, rather than do a realistic rendition, though strong drawing underpins his compositions. He uses photographic references, sometimes several for a single piece, but never copies them literally.

    While he’s known for his landscapes, he also has painted urban scenes as well as figures, two of which were shown at Longyear last month (the nude figures were painted decades ago at life drawing sessions at Spring Street Studio, in Manhattan).  Of late he has been experimenting, resulting in “A Line in Winter,”

    which was also included in last month’s members’ show.  It depicts a field in winter; gestural strokes, akin to Zen ink paintings in their economy, describe a receding fence, which directs the eye to a forested ridge in the background. An expansive sense of space and light are conveyed with the most minimal means, a tribute to Curran’s skill and vision.

  • INTRODUCING NEW MEMBER RAY CURRAN AND MEMBERS SHOW

    Longyear Gallery of Margaretville is pleased to announce the opening of two new concurrent exhibitions: “Introducing New Member Ray Curran: The Waterfront in Watercolor” and “Members’ Spring Group Show.”

    Opening on Friday, April 24th, these exhibitions will run through Sunday, May 24th
    Opening Reception for both on Saturday, April 25th from 3-5 p.m. 

    “INTRODUCING NEW MEMBER RAY CURRAN: ‘THE WATERFRONT IN WATERCOLOR’” AND “MEMBERS’ SPRING GROUP SHOW” 

     According to new Longyear Gallery Member Ray Curran, “Water bodies of various types have played an important role throughout my life.” When reflecting on “The Waterfront in Watercolor,” his introductory exhibit, Curran notes that “Starting with my childhood summers at ‘No Name Pond,’ or sailing on the English Channel and kayaking on the Hudson River (about 25 times each summer for the last 30 years), it was inevitable that there be a nautical focus in much of my artwork. I am endlessly fascinated with the magic of the sky and the water and the interaction they have with much that has been built along the edges. The selection of work in this exhibit is a small sample of the various roles that waterfronts have had in my work. Besides being on the water, painting of waterfronts remains one of the top pleasures in my life.”

    Ray Curran was born and brought up in the state of Maine. After a successful career as a professional urban and environmental planner, designer and teacher in the US, Europe and Latin America whose principal interest was the relationship of people’s experience with the built environment, Ray moved “up river” to the Mid-Hudson area where he was Senior Planner for the environmental organization Scenic Hudson and eventually became a consultant. He studied art in New York City at the Art Student League and Parsons School of Design and later at the Woodstock School of Art. Working in his own studio in Olivebridge, NY, where he has his home, since 2009, Curran has had solo shows in numerous venues including the Arts Society of Kingston, the Hudson River Maritime Museum in Kingston, as well as being in several group and juried shows in the Mid-Hudson region. He has been the recipient of various awards for his work and was also a founding member and vice president of the Kingston Midtown Arts District in Kingston.

    Robin Halprin
    Sheila McManus
    Bonnie Mitchell
    Mary McFerran
    Deborah Ruggerio
    Lynn Woods

    Longyear Gallery’s “Members’ Spring Group Show” includes the work of all 34 gallery members. Among the works in this show are Lynn Woods’s colorful still life paintings in oil on paper, Marion Behr’s acrylics, Gail Freund’s acrylic painting of “Michael’s Garden,” Ann Lee Fuller’s mysterious oil painting “Half Light,” Irina Grinevitsky’s “Bull Costa Rica,” Robin Halpern’s two abstract paintings in mixed media, Patrice Lorenz’s oil painting “Figure with Birdbath,” three watercolors by Ron Macklin, four variations of Sheila McManus’s gouache on paper “March Stripes,”  two monoprints by Alan Powell, two photographs by Helane Levine-Keating, Lesley A. Powell’s collage “Flowers Hiding Fish,” Bonnie Mitchell’s photograph “Halloween NYC,” Deborah Ruggerio’s watercolor “White Lily,” and Anthony Margiotta’s ink and gouache “Tree Hugger.”

    Future 2026 Longyear Gallery exhibits feature two concurrent featured artists solo exhibitions, Lesley A. Powell’s “Jux Ta Position” and paintings by Neil Driscoll, accompanied by a Members’ Group Show running from Friday, May 29th through Sunday, June 28th, 2026 with the opening reception on Saturday, May 30th from 3-5 p.m., followed by two solo featured artists exhibitions by Alan Powell and Irina Grinevitsky, running from Friday, July 3rd through Sunday, August 2rd with the opening reception on Saturday, July 4th from 3-5 p.m., accompanied by a Members’ Group Show. 

    Longyear Gallery is located Downstairs in The Commons, 785 Main Street, Margaretville. The gallery will be open from 12 p.m. – 5 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. For information, please see Longyear Gallery’s website, www.longyeargallery.org, email the gallery at info@longyeargallery.org, or call 845.586.3270 during gallery hours. 

    Screenshot

  • Farewell Frank Manzo

    We recently lost our beloved retired former member Frank Manzo, who passed away on March 31, 2026, at the age of 85. Born on October 23, 1940, Frank was a resident of Brooklyn and Roxbury New York. 


    An architect and photographer, Frank, along with his painter and printmaker wife Helene became founding members of Longyear Gallery,  nearly 20 years ago. Frank Manzo has also exhibited his photographs at the Roxbury Arts Group, the Salmagundi Club and at the Catskill Center’s Erpf Gallery.

    “Since photographs strive to capture the visual effect of the temporal changes in light that lend an atmospheric sense to a two dimensional image and the quality and changes of light inform the image, assuring that each image is unique, the challenge is to create both an interesting composition with painterly qualities that resent to the viewer more than one interpretation, thus allowing one to see different aspects each time it is viewed.”

    Our hearts go out to his wife Helene and their family. We will miss Frank and remember him always.

  • DRAWING – Take a Line for a Walk

    by Lynn Woods

    “DRAWING – Take a Line for a Walk,” the special exhibit on view through April 19 featuring the work of 20 Longyear members, inspired many of the participating artists to take a fresh approach.

    For example, Sara Stone literally “took a line for a walk” by starting her small, 9×9” square watercolor pieces with the application of a single color, letting her brush meander across the paper in a pleasing configuration, followed by another swath of adjacent color and then another, building up the composition. “I could get cool things happening with the transitions,” she says, that is, in the switch from one color to another, from dark to light, pale to saturated, and even within the application of a single color as she lightened or darkened the tone.  Separating each undulating shape are thin white lines, consisting of the unpainted underlying paper, which gives the pieces a mosaic-like quality.  Varying from compositions consisting of lighter, floral-like colors to dramatic contrasts of rich, warm hues against dark blues and purples, the pieces are magical, their glowing chromatics perpetually in motion, suggesting the latent forces of nature.

    Line is similarly conceived as color forms in Sheila McManus’s series of nine square paintings, which are shown clustered together, as sections of a single painting. Crescents and swirling strips of muted greens, yellows, blues, russets, oranges and lavender overlap in a dense, tangled field emerging from a dark, mysterious ground. The color harmonies are exquisite and the brushwork crisp yet spontaneous.

    Ron Macklin also took the theme of the exhibit as a fresh directive, in this case to simplify his palette to two tones, which give his paintings a graphic quality. “Notan”—a Japanese term referring to a design in lights and darks—”has the quality of a line drawing,” he says. Two of his paintings are of figures in an urban street scene, lent a grittiness by the stark contrasts of black and white. The third painting, even more of a departure from his hyper-realistic watercolors, is a mysterious image, until, after some scrutiny, one makes out the keys and typing guide of a vintage typewriter. Working from a photographic image in which the distorted lens exaggerated the curving and elongation of the keys, which he then tightly cropped, Ron transformed the object into a soaring stadium-like space, with the lettered keys dramatically enlarged, attenuated and falling away along the bottom edge. His use of masking fluid served to blur and smear some of the darked edges, further abstracting the image, in what is a truly original, masterful piece.

    To the casual viewer, Marion Behr’s three drawings, two in pen and ink and the third done with a rapidograph, most closely adhere to the theme. Each of the images appears to be composed of a single, black, continuous line, and they clearly are influenced by the artist’s former practice of working in wire, which she used to create armatures for her sculptures. (She notes that there are some broken lines in the pieces, although “the thought process is taking a few lines on a walk.”) “Drawing has been a major part of my practice,” she says, noting that she made etchings while employed at Parsons and used to sketch people on the train while commuting from her home in New Jersey to the city. “AI” reflects “on the machine taking over people,” while “Vote” evolved from the many drawings Marion made while attending the Fourth of July fair in Margaretteville. The drawings have a wonderful, whimsical quality, and the large protruding hands in “AI” are the Picasso-like grace notes of the two oddly conflated figures, which also suggest the automatic drawings of the Surrealists and Dadaists.

    Drawing is also critical to the painting practice of Wayne Morris; he says he usually makes sketches before beginning a painting. The selection of his drawings in the show documents his range—from a rough charcoal sketch and pencil drawing of trees to a beautifully detailed view of a forested hill, in which each tree wears an aureole of light, to a pair of pencil portraits, in which the sensitively rendered tones of the heads and faces, emerging out of a lightly sketched body, convey the specific character of the sitter.  Victoria Scott’s drawings, varying in size and medium, including ink and compressed charcoal, document the woods of the Catskills juxtaposed with a monument in honor of working people at a historic site in her native Philadelphia. 

    In his video entitled “Largo Florida Soundscape,” Alan Powell interpreted a line as a dancing physical string upon which hangs a flat round translucent disc nudged by the wind.  The dangling disc is actually the bottom part of a windchime, which he videotaped for seven minutes on a visit to Florida. The ring of the chime, which one hears through headphones, prompts the moving image and becomes increasingly distorted thanks to Powell’s use of electronic image processing. The disc spins upside down and flashes various colors, the blues suggesting the silhouette of planet earth, the fiery oranges and pinks the sun, or perhaps a party balloon. The recorded soundscape is visceral, complete with sirens, and its distortions and the ensuing chaos of the image take on cosmic overtones. It’s a moving experience, in which a mundane moving object somehow conveys the vulnerabilities and trauma of our times.

    Other delights of the show are Deborah Ruggerio’s intricate, delicately toned ink drawings of the local landscape; Richard Mills’ graphite and pastel depictions of Lexington Avenue apartment brick buildings, with their rhythmic array of windows; Anthony Margiotta’s fanciful ink and gouache drawings (a personal favorite is the Steinberg-like “Tilling,” in which the lines describing the sweeping expanse of a field are shown emerging from a pen held in the grip of an elephant’s tail; a clown sits astride the beast in the foreground); the oilstick and acrylic paintings of sea, tree and leaf of Michelle Spark, in which lines serve as the life force; and the India ink paintings of Gail Freund, which in their simplicity and spontaneity of touch convey the freshness of the woods in snow and the tumbling blossoms of a plant. Other works, too numerous to describe here, are by Lariar, Mary McFerran, Gerda van Leeuwen, Hedi Kyle, Temma Bell, Neil Driscoll, and Bonnie Mitchell.

    “Drawing a line can be interpreted in many ways. I chose to select a stack of cardboards, various inks, paints, and instruments such as brushes, and pencils, and pens that would create lines of different character going in all directions. I followed my intuition as how to begin, where to use color, when to stop.” Hedi Kyle

  • LONGYEAR GALLERY, 3/20 – 4/19/26 TWO NEW EXHIBITIONS:

    TWO NEW EXHIBITIONS:

    “DRAWING – TAKE A LINE FOR A WALK” and “MEMBERS’ GROUP EXHIBITION”

    LONGYEAR GALLERY, MARCH 20th – APRIL 19th, 2026
    OPENING RECEPTION: SATURDAY, MARCH 21st from 3-5 p.m.

    Longyear Gallery of Margaretville is pleased to announce the opening of two new concurrent exhibitions: “DRAWING – Take A Line for a Walk” and “Members’ Group Exhibition.” Opening on Friday, March 20th, these exhibitions will run through Sunday, April 19th with the Opening Reception for both on Saturday, March 21st from 3-5 p.m.

    Longyear Gallery’s new exhibition “DRAWING – Take a Line for a Walk” includes works in a series informed by a special theme chosen annually by Longyear members. This year’s exhibit includes Marion Behr’s black and white drawings using a rapidograph or a Farber pen; Temma Bell’s five black and white self-portraits using ink on paper; Neil Driscoll’s acrylic on canvas color painting; Gail Freund’s India ink on paper black and white flowers and landscapes; Ron Macklin’s black and white city watercolors; Anthony Margiotta’s ink and gouache along with black and white ink drawings; Sheila McManus’s six abstract ”February Lines” using gouache on paper; Wayne Morris’s “Bovina Mountain View,” using graphite on Strathmore; Alan Powell’s color details from video installations; Deborah Ruggerio’s black and white ink on paper drawings of local landscapes; Victoria Scott’s black and white drawing using ink on Arches watercolor paper; Michelle Spark’s acrylic and oil on paper dreamy drawings; and Sara Stone’s color drawings using watercolor on paper along with the works in series of member artists Hedi Kyle, Linda Lariar, Mary McFarren, Richard Kirk Mills, Bonnie Mitchell, and Gerda van Leeuwen.

    Marion Behr
    Ron Macklin
    Anthony Margiotta
    Mary McFerran
    Alan Powell
    Deborah Ruggerio

                Longyear Gallery’s newest spring “Members’ Group Exhibition” includes a Robert Axelrod black and white landscape etching, Joanne Barham’s multimedia art on canvas, a Robert Buckwalter oil painting, Marcia Clark’s cityscapes in oil, Ray Curran’s watercolors on linen, an Ann Lee Fuller oil painting, Irina Grinevitsky’s art, Robin Halpern’s two portraits in mixed media, Margaret Leveson’s art, two black and white cloudscape archival photographs by Helane Levine-Keating, Patrice Lorenz’s painting using Fasche paint on paper, Lesley A. Powell’s paintings using encaustic or oil, Ros Welchman’s ceramics, and two still life oil paintings by Lynn Woods.

    Joanne Barham
    Ray Curran
    Ann Lee Fuller
    Irina Grinevitsky
    Robin Halpern
    Lynn Woods

                “Rust Cabinet,” the gallery’s newest Cabinet of Curiosities, curated by Longyear Gallery Members Hedi Kyle, Gerda van Leeuwen, and Mary McFerran has been installed in time for the opening of these two new exhibitions. It is on view just outside the gallery in the interior display in the Commons hallway.

    Future 2026 Longyear Gallery exhibits feature a Members’ Group Show running from Friday, April 24th through Sunday, May 24th, 2026 with the opening reception on Saturday, April 25th from 3-5 p.m., followed by two solo featured artists exhibitions by Neil Driscoll and Lesley A. Powell, running from Friday, May 29th-Sunday, June 28th with the opening reception on Saturday, May 30th from 3-5 p.m., accompanied by a Members’ Group Show.

    Longyear Gallery is located Downstairs in The Commons, 785 Main Street, Margaretville. The gallery will be open from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. For information, please see Longyear Gallery’s website, email the gallery at info@longyeargallery.org, or call 845.586.3270 during gallery hours.