Arcadia Contemporary | 10/14-11/15 New York, NY

Conversations

Mary Jane Ansell shows new work at Arcadia Contemporary this fall.

By Alyssa M. Tidwell

Opening at Arcadia Contemporary in the middle of October is a solo exhibition of new artwork by figurative realist Mary Jane Ansell. Many of the works have grown out of her Conversationseries—a group of paintings that focus on the dialogue that artists and collectors have with the works that have deeply influenced them.

Love’s Piercing Dart, 2026, oil on aluminum panel, 18 x 18 in.

“I’m interested in the way paintings I’ve loved interact with my own narratives, reaching back to that world but meaning something fresh to me,” Ansell says. “In one painting, my model is framed by a glimpse of Botticelli’s Primavera, baring her chest as Cupid draws his bow behind her. Meanings merge into something new.”

Ansell speaks of her new 18-by-18-inch oil Love’s Piercing Dart,in which a woman with dark brunette hair and striking blue eyes stares at a point out of frame.

Liberty Inclined, 2025, oil on aluminum panel, 26 in.

“Technically too, these references have taken me somewhere unexpected,” the artist continues. “Trying to understand a Boucher brushstroke, or the very different surfaces Botticelli painted on, led me back into researching and incorporating some of the materials, mediums and paint handling they used.”

Other paintings in the forthcoming exhibition include Turkish Bath, a 12-inch tondo that references Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’ Le Bain turc, as well as Echoes and Grace,another circular portrait of a woman with twisting hair in front of a classical painting.

Turkish Bath, 2026, oil on aluminum panel, 12 in.

“Liberty Inclined continues another thread I’ve returned to over many years,” the artist adds. The oil—featuring a large Union Jack in the background and the English flag in the foreground—is punctuated by deep crimson hues. “I’m fascinated by how a familiar archetype such as liberty continually changes, reinvented by the moment in which we encounter it.”

She continues, “After 30 years of painting, growth increasingly means drawing more freely on everything I’ve learned. In these paintings I’ve embraced the idea that different passages demand different solutions: thin staining, glazing, opacity, texture, softness or precise detail. The character of the paint itself becomes part of the references within the piece.”