Chromatic Scales: Justin Adian, Beverly Fishman, Marcia Hafif, Mimi Herbert, Tom McGlynn, Liane Nouri, Ruth Pastine, Paul Reed, Robert Swain, Li Trincere, and Ken Weathersby

Kensington, MD.

Justin Adian (b. 1976, Fort Worth) creates composite wall-mounted sculptures that straddle the divide between painting and sculpture. His process involves stretching oil, enamel, or spray-painted canvas around foam cushions, resulting in soft, bulbous forms that interact with the architecture of the gallery. Through his shaped canvases, Adian explores the playful tension between three-dimensional volume and the flat surface of traditional painting.

Adian received his BFA from the University of North Texas and his MFA from Rutgers University. He has exhibited extensively in the United States and Europe, with solo exhibitions at Skarstedt (London and New York), Almine Rech (Paris), and Half Gallery (New York). In 2024, his work was featured in The Shaped Canvas, Revisited at Luxembourg + Co. His works are part of several prominent private and public collections worldwide. Adian’s practice is characterized by an assertiveness that challenges the historical weight of minimalism with a sense of material lightness. He currently lives and works in New York.

Beverly Fishman (b. 1955, Philadelphia) creates meticulously crafted paintings and sculptures that explore the medicalization of the human body and the aesthetics of the pharmaceutical industry. Utilizing high-gloss finishes and industrial materials like urethane and wood, her work translates the forms of pills, capsules, and barcode patterns into geometric abstractions. Fishman’s practice investigates the socio-cultural relationship between the desire for healing and the chemical infrastructure of contemporary life.

Fishman received her BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art and her MFA from Yale University. She has exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Chrysler Museum of Art. In 2021, her work was the subject of the solo exhibition Cure at Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the High Museum of Art, and the Cranbrook Art Museum, where she served as the Artist-in-Residence and Head of the Painting Department from 1992 to 2019. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2005), an Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2016), and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.

Marcia Hafif (b. 1929, Pomona; d. 2018, Laguna Beach) was a seminal American artist whose sixty-year career spanned Pop-Minimal painting, experimental photography, and conceptually driven monochromes. Central to her oeuvre was a methodical approach to the act of painting, emphasizing the natural idiosyncrasies of the human touch. Hafif’s practice was defined by Inventory—a systematic exploration of various mediums and techniques that sought to begin again the process of making art.

Hafif earned her BA from Pomona College and her MFA from the University of California, Irvine. Her work has been exhibited internationally since 1964, with a major solo exhibition at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland, in 2017. In 2023, her work was featured in the solo exhibition Select Work from “The Inventory,” 1967-1998 at Franklin Parrasch Gallery, NY. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hammer Museum, LA, and Mamco, Geneva. She was a prolific writer and theorist, notably authoring the influential 1978 Artforum essay, ‘Beginning Again’.

Mimi Herbert (b. 1936, Brooklyn) is a pioneering American sculptor known for her experimentations with formed plastic and minimalist geometric shapes. A figure associated with the Washington Color School, she developed a unique technique of vacuum-forming and folding acrylic sheets to create three-dimensional folded works that play with transparency and reflected light. Her practice reflects a career-long fascination with the intersection of industrial materials and fluid, organic form.

Herbert received her degree from Syracuse University and later studied Indian art and language. Her work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and in a landmark 1975 solo exhibition at Henri Gallery. Her sculptures are in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and The Phillips Collection. In 2022, her sculpture Red Triplet—originally part of the Corcoran Gallery of Art collection—was re-installed in the atrium of the National Gallery of Art. Herbert has spent much of her career living and working in Washington, D.C., and Arlington, Virginia.

Tom McGlynn (b. 1958, New Jersey) is an artist, writer, and curator whose paintings explore the semiotics of contemporary urban life. Drawing from the visual language of signage, logos, and architectural cues, McGlynn distills these everyday graphics into minimalist, hard-edge arrangements of color and form. His practice functions as a visual inquiry into how we perceive and navigate the saturated information environments of the modern world.

McGlynn received his BFA from Ramapo College and his MFA from Hunter College, NY. He has exhibited at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and the Jersey City Museum. In 2022, his work was featured in the solo exhibition This Here at Rick Wester Fine Art, NY. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. McGlynn is also the founding Director of Beautiful Fields and a regular contributor to The Brooklyn Rail. He lives and works in the New York area.

Liane Nouri  (b. 1961, New York) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores the intersection of painting, architecture, and light. Often utilizing minimalist structures and vibrant color fields, she translates architectural principles into fluid, layered compositions. Her work frequently investigates the consequent space created by the interaction of form and shadow, bridging the gap between two-dimensional surfaces and three-dimensional environments.

Nouri received her BA and MFA in Painting from The City College of New York and studied at the School of Architecture at CCNY and the Art Students League. She has exhibited extensively, with solo shows at Murakami Gallery, NY, and Kathleen Jacobs Studio, MA, and numerous group exhibitions at Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, and Carrie Chen Gallery, Great Barrington. In 2023, she was included in Beyond Shape and Color at L'Entrepot, Monaco. Her works are held in the private collections of Giuseppina Panza and Jim and Kathleen Jacobs, among others. Beyond her studio practice, Nouri founded Architecture for Art, a project dedicated to illustrating the intersection of the two fields through documentaries and exhibits.

Ruth Pastine (b. 1964, New York City) creates abstract minimalist paintings and multi-panel installations that explore the phenomenological experience of color, light, and space. Working with traditional materials of oil paint applied with brushes and powder chalk pastels, she develops subtle, banded gradations of primary and complementary hues to create optical inductions that appear to pulse and shift. Her practice is deeply rooted in the dialogue between the immateriality of light and the material surface of the canvas. 

Pastine received her BFA from Cooper Union and her MFA from Hunter College. She is the recipient of a post-graduate residency at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and an independent fellowship in Florence, Italy. She has had numerous solo exhibitions at Brian Gross Fine Art, San Francisco, Edward Cella Art & Architecture, Los Angeles, and Gallery Sonja Roesch, Houston. In 2014, her work was the subject of a survey exhibition, Attraction: 1993-2013, at the Lancaster Museum of Art and History (MOAH). Her work is represented in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD), de Young Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C among others. She currently lives and works in Southern California. 

Paul Reed (b. 1919, Washington, D.C.; d. 2015, Phoenix) was a founding member of the Washington Color School, celebrated for his systematic exploration of color relationships and shaped canvases. His practice evolved from zigzagging stripes to complex geometric forms, including his iconic Zig-Fields series, which pushed the boundaries of how color could define three-dimensional space. Reed’s work is characterized by its technical precision and its role in the development of 1960s hard-edge abstraction.

Reed taught for many years at the Corcoran School of Art. He exhibited extensively during his lifetime, including solo shows at the Jefferson Place Gallery and inclusion in the seminal 1965 exhibition Washington Color Painters at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art. His work is in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art, the Phillips Collection, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2011, he was honored with a career retrospective, Ultraviolet to Infrared, at the Workhouse Arts Center in Virginia.

Robert Swain (b. 1940, Austin) has spent over five decades researching the perceptual impact of color. A leading figure of the Hunter Color School, Swain developed a complex system of thousands of individual hues, which he organized into large-scale grid paintings designed to trigger a physiological response in the viewer. His practice treats color as a form of energy, exploring its ability to alter human consciousness and spatial perception.

Swain received his BA from American University and taught at Hunter College for forty-six years. His work has been the subject of major exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. In 2010, the Hunter College/Times Square Gallery hosted a major survey of his work, Visual Sensations. His paintings are held in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and the Walker Art Center. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (1969) and two National Endowment for the Arts grants. He lives and works in New York City.

Li Trincere (b. 1960, New York) has created non-objective and geometric abstract paintings for over three decades, engaging in a hard-edge, systematic visual language. She develops her works around points of tension, utilizing contrasting colors and sharp, cutting edges to create a sense of urgency that extends beyond the perimeter of the canvas. Rejecting strict categorization within Minimalism, Trincere’s practice focuses on the distinction between outer perimeters and inner shapes to shift the pace of spectatorship.

Trincere received her BA from Southampton College and her MFA in painting from Hunter College, NY. She has exhibited widely throughout the United States and Germany, including at Artists Space, NYC, and Galerie Rolf Ricke in Cologne. In 1990, she was a Fellow at the Edward Albee Foundation. In 2023, her work was featured in the solo exhibition The Late Cold War Works at David Richard Gallery. Her work is held in the permanent collections of numerous private and public institutions, including JP Morgan, American Express, and Chase Bank. Trincere is the recipient of several awards, including multiple Pollock-Krasner Foundation grants (1986, 1988, 1989), a New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (1989), and a National Endowment for the Arts grant (1991). She lives and works in New York.

Ken Weathersby (b. 1963, Gulfport) produces paintings and sculptures that disrupt the traditional viewing experience by folding, cutting, or physically altering the canvas support. His work often integrates wood, found objects, and photo-based elements, creating a dialogue between the internal geometry of the painting and its external physical structure. Weathersby’s practice investigates the point where the image breaks down into its constituent parts, revealing the hidden mechanics of the art object.

Weathersby received his BFA from the University of Southern Mississippi and his MFA in Painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, with solo shows at Minus Space, Brooklyn, and Pierogi Gallery, NY. In 2025, his work was featured in the solo exhibition OL-i Paintings at Kent Place Gallery. His works are in the permanent collections of the University of Southern Mississippi Museum of Art and several private institutions. He is the recipient of a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Painting Fellowship (2016) and was an Aljira Emerge Fellow. He currently lives and works in the New York metropolitan area.