EVENT SCHEDULE

The Grenning Gallery is pleased to present Summer’s Here, the gallery’s first exhibition of the high season. Returning artists Steven Levin and Sarah Lamb debut new paintings, and the gallery introduces two established realist painters new to the roster: Steven Assael and David Saunders. The exhibition opens with a reception on Saturday, May 30, from 6:00 to 7:30 pm, and remains on view through Sunday, June 21.

Summer’s Here is a group exhibition highlighting four established realist painters who reaffirm the ethos on which Grenning Gallery was founded: a space for classically trained artists inspired by nature and humanity. Steven Levin brings a surrealist sensibility to meticulously crafted compositions; Sarah Lamb delivers lush, decadent still life paintings. Exhibiting at Grenning for the first time is renowned figurative painter Steven Assael, whom Gallery Owner Laura Grenning has long admired. Also new to the roster is David Saunders, an acclaimed mixed-media artist whose deeply humanist subjects and distinctive process of incising canvases first caught the eye of Gallery Manager Megan Toy. Together, these four painters challenge the viewer with expert precision and richly varied renderings of the human experience.

Steven Levin (b. 1964, Minnesota)

Levin’s “The Gardener” pairs classical technique with playfully surrealist subject matter. An apron-clad gardener leans on his spade and surveys his work with solemn composure—a single tree emerging from the soil before him. His unfazed demeanor stands in quiet juxtaposition to his environment: the grassy plot beneath him hovers among the clouds. The work marks a distinct departure from Levin’s realist figure paintings and recalls the spirit of René Magritte’s Golconda (1953, The Menil Collection).

The exhibition also features the next installment in Levin’s celebrated hat series, “The White Bowler.” A white bowler hat hovers above a marble dais beneath a crescent moon and an empty nest holding only a single white feather. Apricot light along the horizon suggests either dusk or dawn. The transitional light and the empty nest together evoke themes of rebirth and new beginnings.

Rounding out Levin’s contribution is “Blue and White,” a still life firmly grounded in traditional realism. Several chinoiserie vases are paired with green apples and a cyan urn, with nothing to distract from Levin’s meticulous rendering of light, shadow, and texture. The soft folds of a linen backdrop set off the glassy sheen of antique pottery and the waxy surface of apple skin.

Sarah Lamb (b. 1971, Virginia)

Sarah Lamb’s “Le Petit Déjeuner” is a realist showstopper. Set in a warmly lit domestic interior, the painting presents fresh bread, butter, and jam with an inviting glow. A glass jug of milk commands the composition, the label’s pop of blue drawing the eye while showcasing Lamb’s mastery of depicting texture through refracted light. Together, these simple elements evoke the unhurried pleasures of country living.

“Ripening Peaches” is another endorsement for eating local; a farmstand-fresh paper bag stands tall and open, with the produce on the table; 5 round peaches and a few stray leaves from the tree which they were plucked from.

Steven Assael (b. 1957, New York)

For Gallery Owner Laura Grenning, presenting Steven Assael represents the fulfillment of a long-held ambition. Assael’s work has been legendary among painters and collectors in the realist art world for decades, and Summer’s Here marks his first exhibition at the Grenning Gallery. Widely regarded as one of the finest living realist painters in the United States, Assael’s career predates the contemporary atelier movement—he has been showing in galleries since 1979, and his work is held in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Arkansas Art Center. That institutional recognition comes as no surprise: from the very beginning, Assael’s singular talent set him apart.

What distinguishes Assael is not technical mastery alone—though that mastery is formidable—but his unflinching observation of each individual he paints. The sense of a person, their inner life and presence, is palpable in his work to anyone who takes a moment to absorb the painting.

The exhibition includes several of Assael’s oil-on-copper paintings. Among them, “Candace” stands out for its subject and technique in equal measure. Assael’s classical handling brings rich color and depth to his depiction of a contemporary woman: her torso is rendered in meticulous detail to showcase her full-body tattoos, while her hair and right-hand dissolve into gestural brushstrokes—as if she is becoming one with the copper plate beneath.

Firefighters have been a recurring subject in Assael’s work since the 1990s. “Cleaner’s Fire” was directly inspired by an event Assael witnessed at a dry-cleaning facility in Queens during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this large-scale oil, shimmering bands of rainbow flame illuminate the firefighters’ reflective clothing and stretch upward into a smoke-filled sky. The solemn backs of the figures contrast the glistening fire beyond—a testament to Assael’s ability to find beauty in the midst of catastrophe.

David Saunders (b. 1954, New York)

David Saunders rounds out the exhibition with his signature layered approach to painting. Having begun his career in the arts as an aid to his father, Norman Saunders, the legendary pulp illustrator, and then meeting mentor Joseph Cornell while still in high school; Saunders early immersion in contemporary art granted him the time and opportunity to experiment in various artistic fields. First, in acquiring found objects, and then in film and set design, to assemblage and sculpture, and more. Saunders held his first exhibition out of Red Grooms’s studio in 1977, and by 1979, he was exhibiting a large installation at the New Museum. Over the years, Saunders was hired for many public sculpture commissions, from “Art on the Beach” 1982, at Battery Park, to “Seat” 1987 in the Bronx; or “Apple Fence” 1992 at Laguardia Airport, The Port Authority of NY and NJ; Saunders outdoor sculpture often invites the community to engage with or feel in-tune with the work. Saunders works have been collected by notable institutions including New York’s The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Hirschorn Museum (Washington DC) to name a few. It has been nearly 20 years since Saunders’s last gallery exhibition, and Grenning Gallery is honored to remind the world of his humble perspective, and his fresh take on realist painting.

Working across media, Saunders brings a collage-like sensibility to his canvases through bold color and an incising technique that carves into the surface itself. In “Spanish Guitar,” the guitar, bench, water gourd, and scattered onions are rendered in full color, while the guitarist himself appears as a carved golden form—as though his likeness was stripped from the canvas, leaving behind only an outline of his presence.

The largest painting from Saunders is “Fisherman’s Lures”; simultaneously a still-life and a figurative portrait of three men, yet these men exist in the second dimension. The three conspiring businessmen are drawn on an old boat dock in a local marina and then situated on a naturalist seascape of that marina. This compositional choice undermines the so-called “reality” of the landscape by treating its elements as malleable to the artist’s theatrical “stage direction”.

In “Gin,” a realist rendering of a shot glass is surrounded by incised figures of men and women in various states of intoxication. Rather than celebrating excess, the scene is suffused with a brooding weight—figures beaten down by their own indulgence, with falling babies amplifying the atmosphere of ruin. Saunders brings both technical invention and moral seriousness to his work, making him a compelling addition to the Grenning roster.

Summer’s Here is on view May 30 through June 21 at The Grenning Gallery, 26 Main Street, Sag Harbor, NY 11963. The Opening Reception takes place Saturday, May 30, from 6:00 to 7:30 pm.