First Look: Paintings from the Collection

First Look: Paintings from the Collection brings together a selection of paintings added to the Burchfield Penney permanent collection over the past three years, offering the public an initial opportunity to encounter these recent acquisitions. All works in the exhibition entered the collection after 2022 and reflect a period of active, intentional growth, as the museum continues to refine and expand its approach to collecting painting today.

The paintings on view represent a wide range of artistic voices, generations, and formal approaches. Historical works such as Robert North Sr.’s 1949 painting Untitled (Dancing Barn), anchor the exhibition in regional and modernist traditions, while more recent acquisitions—including George Afedzi Hughes’s Tactics (2022) and Karen JS Tashjian’s theheights (2021)—demonstrate how contemporary painters engage with abstraction, structure, and spatial tension. Together, these works underscore the museum’s commitment to both continuity and change within the medium.

Several paintings foreground observation and lived experience through quieter, introspective modes. Chris Liberti’s Waiting for a Plant (2024) and Thomas Matyas’s The Lucid Year (2024) emphasize psychological atmosphere, while Joy Brandys’s untitled mixed-media painting (2023) reflects an experimental, materially driven approach that blurs the boundaries between painting and object. Elisabeth Samuels’s triptych Scape (1988) expands the exhibition’s compositional range and highlights the relevance of painterly exploration across multiple canvases.

At the other end of the spectrum, Kyle Butler’s Negative Common Derivative 06 (2025) points toward painting’s ongoing evolution, embracing systems, repetition, and conceptual frameworks that situate the medium firmly within the present. Seen collectively for the first time, these works invite viewers to consider how new acquisitions shape the character and direction of the collection, and how painting remains a dynamic, responsive, and enduring form.

First Look offers a moment of introduction and discovery—a snapshot of a collection in formation. By bringing together paintings that vary widely in style, intention, and historical moment, the exhibition invites audiences to engage with the ideas, concerns, and formal investigations that define recent work in painting and point towards the museum’s future.