Artists

Natasha Wright is a New Zealand born artist based in New York. Wright’s practice explores and redresses the depiction of woman-as-subject throughout history. Her large-scale paintings fuse figuration and abstraction in intricately layered compositions; referencing traditional modes of portraiture within contemporary contexts.
 Drawing from portrayals of women throughout antiquity to modern day advertising campaigns and fashion shoots, Wright’s works are grounded in the history of our image making; whilst presenting something instinctively unique.
 Blurring the boundaries between the internal self and the externally built personas we create, Wright’s paintings explore concepts of gender and sexuality. Her figures emerge as powerful beings that subvert performed and projected ideas of womanhood.
 Utilizing neo-expressionism, vivid color and a bold use of line Wright’s depiction of the female form is that of strength and virtue. Her figures are sensual but never passive - Her subjects are central, confident and determined.
 ‘Each artwork has been built-up in layers with flat brushes, used to apply broad swathes of thick oil paint that deliver a captivating tactility. Bright pops of color feel urgent and impactful against the paintings’ dark backgrounds, while the female figures seem to inhabit an in-between space that links past and present; existing within a kind of classical painting canon while simultaneously expressing something that feels anchored in a contemporary context.’
 
Wright studied at the Central Saint Martins School of Art in London in 2013 and received her MFA from The New York Studio School in 2017. She was awarded The New York Studio School Scholarship, The Jane Chace Carroll Merit Award and the LCU Award. Her work has been featured in Art Critical, ArtZone, Denizen, The New Zealand Artist Magazine and The New Zealand Herald. In 2018, Wright’s solo show at SFA Projects, New York, was named one of the five best female art exhibitions in New York City by Harper’s Bazaar.
Wright has exhibited in the United States, New Zealand and Australia. Solo shows include: What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This (M Contemporary, Sydney, Australia, 2023) After Party (Sanderson Contemporary, Auckland, 2022), Sista Grotto (Spring Break Art Fair, New York 2020), When Black Swallows Red (John Davis Gallery, New York, 2019), Sista Chapel (SFA Projects, New York, 2019) and Angels and Icons (Parlour Projects, Hawkes Bay, 2019).

The world-bending art of Reuben Paterson (b. 1973, Auckland, New Zealand: Ngāti Rangitihi, Ngāi Tūhoe, Tūhourangi, Scottish) reaches back to his childhood experiences of the glistening waters and sparkling black sands of Tamaki Makarau's West Coast. His signature use of glitter carries all these memories and the people, presences, and histories to which they connect. Always pushing what he describes as the 'limitless' material and conceptual possibilities of glitter, Paterson's paintings, sculptures, animations, and installations share an optical energy that harnesses the mesmerizing effects of pattern, color, and texture.
Paterson uses the transformative properties of light to reach beyond appearances and pry open the complex histories and tensions that sit just beneath the surface of all things. His art is made in celebration of exchange and encounter, hybridity and fluidity, spirituality and sexuality, and is especially attuned to the dynamics of queer identity and whakapapa (genealogy)-based modes of cultural knowledge. 

Based in New York, Reuben Paterson has exhibited nationally and internationally since 2000.  He has staged recent solo exhibitions at City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi (2023), Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū (2022) and The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt (2020), and has featured in significant group exhibitions such as the largest survey of contemporary Māori art, Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (2020); Contemporary Asian and Pacific Art, The National Gallery of Victoria, Australia (2016); and E Tu Ake, the Musee du quai Branly, Paris, France; the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, New Zealand; Museo Nacional las Culturas, Mexico City, Mexico; and Musee de la Civilisation, Quebec City, Canada (2011-13). Paterson has participated in major international  art fairs and biennales, including Malta Biennale (2024); 17th Biennial of Sydney, Australia (2010); Asia Pacific Triennial, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2009); Prague Biennial, Czech Republic (2010); and the 9th Pacific Biennial, Republic of Palau (2001). Paterson’s recent public art commissions include Guide Kaiārahi at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (2021-26); Te Maiea, Aotea Square, Auckland (2021); and The Golden Bearing, Pukekura Garden of National Significance, Taranaki, New Zealand (2016). His works are housed in major public and private collections across Australasia.

Robert Drysdale is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores abstraction, texture, and layered compositions infused with vibrant color and text. He studied fine art at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena before making art in Los Angeles for several years. Seeking broader creative engagement, he moved to San Francisco to work with the Performance Art Institute, an art residency program that connected him with artists from around the world.

During his time at the institute, Drysdale collaborated on numerous projects. This led to an invitation from a group of Romanian artists to create projects in Bucharest from 2011 to 2013. Immersing himself in the local art scene, he spent multiple years making art within Bucharest’s dynamic cultural landscape.

Following his time in Romania, Drysdale relocated to New York City, where he has been dedicated to an ongoing series of paintings and drawings. His work spans both large and small formats, allowing for a range of physical engagement with surface and scale. In his large-scale paintings, he builds complex layers of texture and color, often incorporating gestural marks and text that emerge and dissolve within the composition. His smaller works maintain this layered approach but emphasize intricate details and a more intimate visual dialogue.

In his newest paintings, Drysdale explores the vibrancy and fragility of flowers, using layered colors and shimmering, loosely applied gold leaf, glitter, and paint to evoke both their ephemeral beauty and delicate impermanence. These works capture the tension between lush, vivid life and the fleeting nature of organic forms, creating surfaces that shift between radiance and decay. Through his dynamic layering process, Drysdale continues his exploration of depth, materiality, and the interplay between organic and artificial elements in contemporary painting.

Justin Orvis Steimer was born in Colorado in1981 and received a BFA from the University of Colorado in 2004. They lived in Paris and Buenos Aires before settling in Brooklyn, New York in 2006. Justin uses a process of reverse-abstraction to create work that they describe as metafigurative: a figurative rendering of metaphysical energy. Their practice ranges from large oil paintings on re-purposed boat sails to small ball point pen drawings. They regularly paint metaphysical portraits of people on materials donated by the subject.

Justin has exhibited in New York, Miami, London, Paris, Venice, Ghent, Istanbul, Zimbabwe and Mexico City. They have work in numerous private and public collections including the National Gallery of Zimbabwe. Justin currently lives and works in Brooklyn with an upcoming two person show this year in Bucharest, Romania with Catinca Tabacaru Gallery and a solo show in Waldoboro, Maine curated by Eric Stark.

EJ Camp is a renowned photographer living in New York City and Orient, NY. The East Coast seas and landscape as well as the surf of the California coastline are her favorite subjects for her work. Camp is internationally known for her iconic movie posters and magazine covers. Her work spans four decades and her images have graced movie posters including Top gun and Forrest Gump. She has also photographed cultural icons such as Annie Lennox, Debbie Harry and Billy idol for the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine. As a photographer and avid sailor, Camp's work is informed by her interest in the sea and the myriad faces of water. These subjects, as part of her fine art practice, have been acquired for private collections and shown in solo and group exhibitions at galleries in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami.

Steven Lemon balances between the man-made and the natural environment; between minimal forms and expressionistic gestures, demonstrating unassuming techniques emphasizing line, form and color. His visual vocabulary is drawn from observation of the world around him — shapes and colors found in architecture, shadows, plants — and has been shaped by his interest in the spaces between places and objects.

Steven Lemon graduated from the Dayton Art Institute in 1969 and received his graduate degree from Baltimore's Rhinehart Graduate School of Sculpture in 1972. He has lived and worked in Tribeca since 1974.

"It's the artist's responsibility to search without rules or methods."

"I've always considered the last piece I did to be the first in a new direction." - S.L.