Although we celebrate his birthday in April, March always reminds me of Shakespeare — something about the melodramatic in-betweenness of this time of year. And thinking of Shakespeare brings me into his theatrical mindset, where notions of madness and absurdity are measures of human reality. But the flippant gaiety also intrinsic to theater can assist in easing the prevailing sense of deterioration that dominates the airwaves. Indeed, March, with its many moods, is also a month of great promise as frosty winter gives way to a cheery primavera. Come hither to the expanses of Upstate New York to encounter fun-loving pre-spring shows that sing to the soul!
At Magazzino Italian Art in Cold Spring is an exquisite presentation of around 100 works by Maria Lai, one of the most outstanding Italian artists of her generation, including many on view for the first time. Everforward, Neverback at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum in Saratoga Springs examines notions of Whiteness in United States history and culture, while Dark Was The Night at Convey/Er/Or Gallery in Poughkeepsie presents paintings and collages that reflect artist ransome’s celebration of Black beauty and individual agency. Colorful, organic works by Gracelee Lawrence and Ruby Palmer inspire at Turley Gallery in Hudson, and the group show If These Walls Could Talk at Carrie Haddad Gallery in Hudson features playful works by five artists. And welcome newcomer gallery Ruthann in Catskill to the scene with their inaugural exhibition Winter Garden, featuring 17 artists based in the Hudson Valley and Manhattan. “Come what, come may,” as Macbeth says, let us laud the gift of art all the way!
Michel Goldberg
Hudson Hall, 327 Warren Street, Hudson, New York
Through March 23
The late English philosopher Alan Watts describes reality as black ink thrown against a wall: The pigment is the ultimate source, while the idiosyncratic wiggles that radiate from it represent the sundry realities of existence (check out his outstanding philosophy lectures on his dedicated website). Such is the esoteric thought that comes to mind when visiting Michel Goldberg’s exhibition of monotypes, drawings, and mixed media works at Hudson Hall. The enduring battle between death and birth in his black and white tonal framework comes through in works such as “After Bertoldo di Giovanni #1” (2008) and “Rushes #1” (2010), where writhing gestures flip and flop in powerful textured patterns. “Arabesque” (2008) seems almost calligraphic, and “Etudes pour Bertoldo #3” (2008) whisks me away to someplace European and charming with its bouncing joyfulness. “Terra Incognita #2” (2021) reminds me of the infinite blob of black from which all things originate — it’s a brilliant obsidian disk that spins within an inked square, each stoic shape allowing perfect space for another.
Gracelee Lawrence and Ruby Palmer: giving me life
Turley Gallery, 609 Warren Street, Floor 2, Hudson, New York
Through March 23
The two-person exhibition giving me life at Turley Gallery in Hudson is an enchanting prelude to the approach of the goddess of spring. Gracelee Lawrence’s digitally fabricated 3D sculptures and Ruby Palmer’s gracefully chunky paintings and works on paper engage in a lively and colorful back-and-forth dance. Lawrence’s rainbow-laden creations, such as “from the lobe of the lung” (2024) and “a growing collection of desire and insight” (2024) are blobby in their curvy organic beauty, whereas “Compel Across Space Like a Wish” (2025) is an oversized human ear with little plastic beetles crawling within its folds. Palmer pulls us deep into the magical tendencies of Mother Nature with her brilliantly orchestrated floral blow-outs done in flashe, acrylic, and acrylagouche, including “New World” (2025), a symphony of purple and blue hues laced with black, and “Water Garden” (2025), an exquisite white composition that is pierced by cobalt blue flowers that appear to hum in celestial accord.
ransome: Dark Was the Night
Convey/Er/Or, 299 Main Street, Poughkeepsie, New York
Through March 30
Born and raised in North Carolina, James Ransome, who goes by “ransome,” first learned to draw by copying comic books and illustrations from the Bible. This devotion to graphically illustrative linework has remained the core of his style. Dark Was The Night at Convey/Er/Or Gallery in Poughkeepsie presents a series of smaller paintings and collages that reflect his celebration of Black beauty and individual agency. Stoic portraits such as “Joe” (2024), dapper in a floppy hat, and “Lester and the Bird” (2025), set against a blazing yellow wall, depict handsome men dressed in fine clothes and peering out at us from a timeless place. “Invisible artist” (2021) features a sturdy woman in a blue polka dot dress in the lower right corner of the composition with a layered fabric painting to the upper left against a stark black background; the pride in her features suggests that she is the creator of the artwork suspended above her. Where “Girl in a Blue Dress” (2025) is a simple vision of a lone female that is almost unfinished-looking in its purity, “Outdoor Man” (2024) is a detailed and richly painted vision of a lanky man standing tall amid a cacophony of oversized birds above and ravishing blossoms below, an energizing vision of a man in all his elegance.
A Closer Look: Fallen Trees and Forest Floors
Olana State Historic Site, 5720 State Route 9G, Hudson, New York
Through March 30
Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900) was a leading artist associated with the Hudson River School, a mid-19th century artistic movement based in Upstate New York founded by a group of landscape painters who employed the visual power of Romanticism to create stunning homages to the area. A Closer Look: Fallen Trees and Forest Floors is the final installment in a four-part thematic curatorial series begun last year at Olana State Historic Site in Hudson that presents artworks from its permanent collection. These sketches and paintings by Church reflect his intense study of nature as the ultimate muse. The background of his densely painted “Wood Interior at Mount Turner” (c. 1877) glows with a hint of neon green, a group of intertwined trees in the foreground appearing as if engaged in a wrestling match. “Wood Interior Near Mount Katahdin” (c. 1877) indicates his exploration of different locales further east in New England, including the great mountains of Maine, which he paints with the same level of devotion. Church’s “Mexican Forest – A Composition” (1891) is the most mischievous of the trio, like a slightly sinister passage of darkened forest in an otherwise charming fairytale.
If These Walls Could Talk
Carrie Haddad Gallery, 662 Warren Street, Hudson, New York
Through April 6
Strange and fanciful interiors and architectural locales are the curatorial thread of If These Walls Could Talk at Carrie Haddad Gallery in Hudson, featuring works by five artists. A series of semi-surrealist paintings by Kathryn Freeman depict mystical scenes between humans and animals, including “Living with Goats” (2023), which features a relaxed woman in a purple dress atop a fleshy pink lounge chair in a well-appointed room where bucks roam freely and a stray goose sails above. In “Summer’s End I” (2024) by Brigid Kennedy, sharply layered color reminiscent of both Japanese woodcuts and Pop Art reveals a sultry vision of a woman and her digital device. The late Lionel Gilbert’s “Still Life with Blue Pitcher” (c. 1960) is a handsome cubist-modernist masterpiece of autumnal abstract shapes, while Judith Wyer’s “Two Hats” (2023) captures a poignant contemporary moment between two figures: a White man frozen in a painting in a museum, and a Black man looking into that portrait, seen from some distance.
Kipton Hinsdale: The Evolution of Mark Making
Distortion Society, 155 Main Street, Beacon, New York
Through April 5
The expansive landscapes of Upstate New York are counterpoint to urban mayhem in Kipton Hinsdale’s paintings, which draw inspiration from the controlled chaos of graffiti, his Brooklyn roots, and the rhythmic qualities of nature. The Evolution of Mark Making at Distortion Society in Beacon presents older and recent mixed media works that showcase the expressive power of Hinsdale’s hand. This sensibility bursts forth in bright and bold works such as “Can You See Me” (2009) and “Multiverse” (2023), where wild and spontaneous marks collide to create dynamic abstract environments that border on berserk. Other works, such as the black-and-red-toned “Carnage” (2025), offer a fluid energy in comparison, and the densely layered “Embers in the Falling Rain” (2017–25) boasts a corpulent thickness. “Restored Focus” (2024) is an exciting and sultry mess of a painting that looks something like purple and green candy melting with chocolate and mixing into an amorphous, pleasurable molten goo — throw me right in.
Everforward, Neverback
Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs, New York
Through April 13
Organized and co-curated by Beck Krefting, professor of American Studies at Skidmore College, with 18 of her students for her class “Critical Whiteness in the United States,” the exhibition Everforward, Neverback examines notions of Whiteness in US history and culture, drawn from the Tang’s personal collection. “My Girl with a Pearl Earring” (2006) by Daesha Devón Harris is a stunning vision of an elegantly dressed woman lit by an emerald green glow that accents her green eye make-up who peers over her shoulder to greet our gaze with tenacity and grace. Meanwhile, Kerry James Marshall’s work on paper, a study for “Brownie” (1995), features a youth in a baseball cap looking upward with tentative eyes as a blazing yellow halo illuminates his face. Kwame Brathwaite’s “Untitled (Grandassa Models at Rockland Palace, Zeta, Sikolo, Pat and Eleanor)” (1967) is an extravagant black and white photo of four lovely ladies who pose in West African-inspired mixed fashions, while Isaac Scott’s “June 6th, 2020. Philadelphia Museum of Art” (2020) is a jubilant vision of a confident dancer posed ecstatically before a crowd of excited onlookers.
Winter Garden
Ruthann, 453 Main Street, Catskill, New York
Through April 20
Welcome newbie gallery Ruthann in Catskill with a visit to their inaugural exhibition Winter Garden, a group show featuring 17 artists based in the Hudson Valley and Manhattan. This cheerful grouping of mixed-media works includes paintings, sculptures, prints, textiles, and ceramics that toy with garden metaphors. Keisha Prioleau-Martin’s “Making The Most of It” (2024) features a smiling brown-skinned figure in the foreground with a smaller faceless and yellow-skinned figure in the background, both of whom seem somewhat unfinished yet perfectly poised in a wild expressionistic environment. “Fluency” (2024) by Scott Vander Veen is a collaged 3D painting that feels almost kinky — it’s the suggestive shred of a photo at the top left of this work, maybe — while Charlotte Becket’s sculpture “Particle Horizon” (2024) suggest logs of wood about to light up as rainbow flames burst forth from the base. “Eyes of the Snail Amphora” (2023) by Dana Sherwood is an amusing and dramatic glazed terracotta vase housing a bold third eye, while the silhouette of Elisa Soliven’s ceramic “Aster Bust #15” (2023) teeters between abstract and figurative.
Fern Apfel: “Letters Home”
Troutbeck, 515 Leedsville Road, Amenia, New York
Through April 27
In our hyper-digital age, the grace of personal penmanship is a bygone skill. Fern Apfel resists this trend. Her solo show Letters Home at Troutbeck in Amenia, presented in collaboration with the Wassaic Project in Wassaic, showcases a series of recent paintings that reflect her affinity for the intimate act and art of writing. Apfel’s meticulous focus on re-creating aged letters can be seen in these richly hued quasi-abstract paintings made of acrylic on wood panel, which are both compelling and calming. In works such as “Letter Home” (2023) and “May 1878” (2024), a writer’s script runs across pages piled atop one another, revealing poetic and prosaic scribblings such as “dear Other” and “Mimi and I went to school.” A work entitled “The Empty Page” (2024) is just that, waiting patiently for a pen to enliven it while nestled against a deep orange background. “Night Sky” (2024) includes a little blue diary from 1948 floating weightlessly in a starry blue expanse, while “Evening Mood” (2024) features a closed card covered in floral green below a landscape with a setting sun, suggesting a personal missive yet to be revealed.
Maria Lai. A Journey to America
Magazzino Italian Art, 2700 Route 9, Cold Spring, New York
Through July 28
An exquisite presentation of the work of Maria Lai, one of the most outstanding Italian artists of her generation, A Journey to America at Magazzino Italian Art in Cold Spring is one of the best shows in the Hudson Valley this season. This retrospective includes around 100 works by the artist, many on view for the first time, including paintings, sculpture, fabric artworks, and photographs and video documenting her 1981 relational art project Legarsi alla montagna (Tying Oneself to the Mountain). Born in Sardinia in 1919, Lai’s art embodies her steadfast devotion to her island and Italian culture. “Veduta di Cagliari” (1952) and “Ovile” (1959) are earlier landscape works that reflect Lai’s abstract tendencies; by the late 1960s, she had established herself in the Abstract Expressionist movement with works such as “Pietre” (1968) and “Notturno n.2” (1968). Lai’s three-dimensional assemblages are edged with Arte Povera influence, and “Telaio” (c. 1971–75), with its combination of wool, wood, leather, fur, and cloth on canvas, is a marvelous culmination of that movement. Works such as “Veliero” (1974) demonstrate her continued use of native Italian textiles, while later works such as “Fili di vela spaziale” (2007) with its dark moody energy and expanded color palette, demonstrate that she continued exploring abstraction well into her 90s.
