New Talent: Six Rising Painters in Landscape & Abstraction
September 1, 2026 – December 19, 2026
New Talent: Six Rising Painters Exploring Landscape & Abstraction
September 1 – December 19, 2026
Artist Reception & Happy Hour: Friday, September 18th, 5:30 – 8:00pm
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.
Read the full press release here.
Artists
Mary Zeran
My relationship with fabric began in childhood. My mother made all of my clothes, and I spent hours with her in fabric stores selecting materials for new outfits. Together, we chose patterns, and I watched as she transformed those choices into something tangible. Those moments extended beyond sewing—they instilled in me an understanding of material…
Kirby Fredendall
Kirby Fredendall was raised in Carversville, Pennsylvania, in Bucks County, where art was part of everyday life rather than separated from it. As a young person, she was surrounded by working artists and their environments: sculptures integrated into an artist’s backyard, a family friend who was a portrait painter capturing moments of her early life,…
Michele Kishita
Michele Kishita is a Philadelphia-based painter whose work engages the landscape through an exploration of light, atmosphere, and spatial perception. Influenced by the graphic stylization and compositional structure of Japanese ukiyo-e prints, her paintings translate natural environments into distilled, immersive visual experiences. Kishita’s work is held in private and corporate collections including Toyota, Capital One,…
Erin McIntosh
Artist Erin McIntosh makes colorful, improvisational paintings merging biomorphic abstraction, collage, and rhythmic movement. Working primarily in water-based media, McIntosh creates dynamic compositions inspired by microscopic forms, gardens, architecture, music, and dance. Working through an intuitive process, lyrical gestures and anthropomorphic shapes emerge, resulting in works that feel animated, musical, and emotionally resonant. Working for…
Ellen Soffer
Ellen Soffer is a contemporary abstract painter. She creates paintings on canvas and paper, using mainly oils, but also gouache, acrylic, and watercolor. Currently in the studio, Soffer is focused on a range of large and small paintings where color and movement are emphasized. In addition to twenty solo exhibitions in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Texas, and…
Angela Warren
Angela Warren is an artist based in Gulfport, Florida, whose life and work have been shaped by time spent in Maine, the Caribbean, and the Gulf Coast. She holds a BFA from Drake University and an MFA from the Maine College of Art, and has exhibited her paintings in venues including Bridgette Mayer Gallery in…