Interviews by Brainard Carey

Sigrid Sandström  earned a BFA at Academie Minerva, Groningen, The Netherlands (1997); attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME (2000); and received an MFA in Painting from Yale University, New Haven, CT (2001).

Sandström has exhibited her work internationally in solo exhibitions at museums including Vandalorum Museum, Värnamo, Sweden; Västerås konstmuseum, Västerås, Sweden; Frye Museum, Seattle, WA; and at galleries including Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles / New York; Perrotin Shanghai and Tokyo; Inman Gallery, Houston, TX; and Cecilia Hillström Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden.

Sandström’s work is in the public collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Borås Konstmuseum, Borås, Sweden; Malmö konstmuseum, Malmö, Sweden; The Public art Agency, Sweden; Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, KS; Västerås konstmuseum, Västerås, Sweden, and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.

Sandström is currently a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts, Helsinki, and has previously held positions as a professor at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm (2010-2020) and an Assistant Professor at Bard College, New York (2005-2010). Sandström lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden.

Sigrid Sandström, Ravel V, 2025 Acrylic on canvas Frame 40" x 59 ⁵⁄₈" x 1 ⁵⁄₈" 

Sigrid Sandström, Ravel X, 2025 Acrylic on canvas Frame 40" x 59 ⁵⁄₈" x 1 ⁵⁄₈" 

Sigrid Sandström, Approaching Times Three, 2025 Acrylic on canvas Frame 40" x 40" x 1 ⁵⁄₈"

Maureen McQuillan (photo credit: Etienne Fossard)Pictured in front of "Crystal Blue Persuasion," her permanent public art installation, completed 2018, which spans three sides of the 36th Avenue N/W station in Astoria, Queens, and was commissioned by Metropolitan Transit Authority/Arts & Design.

Maureen McQuillan creates process-focused, system-based paintings from multiple layers of ink and acrylic polymers that convey a deep but elusive sense of space. Vibrantly hued, she uses rippling, wave-like linear elements and undulating rounded forms to suggest shapes in nature as well as the human body. Her systematic approach to color results in a luminous and complex optical mix reflecting her interest in how our perceptions of color have changed as technology has advanced.

Born and raised in New York City, Maureen McQuillan is a graduate of Columbia University and the New York Studio School.  Since the early 1990s she has been exhibiting her work in solo and group shows in galleries and museums throughout the United States as well as in France, the UK, Costa Rica, and Hong Kong.

McQuillan's work has been reviewed and reproduced in many publications, among them The New York Times, The New York Daily News, The Brooklyn Rail, Two Coats of Paint, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, Artnews, Architectural Digest, and Art on Paper; and her work is held in public and private collections all over the world.

Maureen McQuillan, Untitled (C/T), 2025 Acrylic polymer, ink and acrylic on wood panel. 10 x 10 inches. Courtesy the artist and McKenzie Fine Art, New York.

Maureen McQuillan, Untitled (C/B2), 2025 Acrylic polymer, ink and acrylic on wood panel 30 x 40 inches. Courtesy the artist and McKenzie Fine Art, New York.

Maureen McQuillan, Untitled (C/RB/BG), 2024 Acrylic polymer, ink and acrylic on wood panel. 16 1/4 x 16 inches. Courtesy the artist and McKenzie Fine Art, New York.

Clare Grill (born 1979, lives and works in Queens, NY) received her MFA from the Pratt Institute in 2005 and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2011.

Recent solo exhibitions include Parlance, Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY; Cutwork, Galería Marta Cervera, Madrid, Spain; and Wich Language and Oyster, M+B, Los Angeles, CA. Group exhibitions include Things I Had No Words For at the Center for the Arts, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Interisland (New Paintings from New York and Hawai'i), University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa; Of Flesh and Air, Marta Cervera Gallery, Madrid, Spain; The Feminine in Abstract Painting, Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, New York, NY; Deep! Down! Inside!, Hales Gallery, NY; and New Skin, curated by Jason Stopa, Monica King Gallery, New York, NY.

Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, ArtNews, Hyperallergic, the Brooklyn Rail, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe.

Clare Grill, Drape, 2025, oil on linen, 80 x 112 inches (diptych)

Clare Grill, Dune, 2025, oil on linen, 94 x 73 inches

Clare Grill, Flit, 2025, oil on linen, 46 x 42 inches

photo by Colin Outridge.

The exhibition Change of Scenery,  marks the painter’s third solo show with the gallery. It is the culmination of a year’s worth of travel across the U.S., as Brennan Hinton spent extended time in residency in Corsicana, TX, Martha’s Vineyard, MA, and Fishers Island, NY. Brennan Hinton’s practice focuses on the sustained act of observation, the plein-air discipline, and painting’s ability to capture the essence of a place. The time spent in three distinctive towns, each in its own ways divergent from Brennan Hinton’s familiar Ontario, required the artist to meet each place with open eyes and a fresh palette. To situate himself, Brennan Hinton leaned on two formative texts, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry and Moby Dick by Herman Melville, which are each set in the same landscapes in which he painted.

Keiran Brennan Hinton (b. 1992, Toronto) lives and works in Toronto and Elgin, Ontario. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute in 2014 and his MFA from Yale University in 2016. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Ogunquit Museum of Art, Ogunquit, ME and The Dennos Museum Center, Traverse City, MI. Past international solo shows of Brennan Hinton’s work include exhibitions at MAKI Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2022); Thomas Fuchs Gallery, Stuttgart, Germany (2021); Charles Moffett, New York, NY (2023, 2021); Nicholas Robert Gallery, Ontario (2022); and Francesco Pantaleone Gallery, Palermo, Italy (2019) among others. His paintings have been featured in institutional exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario; James Castle House, Boise, Idaho; and Katonah Museum of Art, Westchester, NY.

Keiran Brennan Hinton, The White Pine, 2025. Oil on linen, 70 x 60 in. Photo by Lauren Finlay. Courtesy the artist and Charles Moffett.

 

Keiran Brennan Hinton, Texas Sky (Sunrise), 2024. Oil on linen, 56 x 44 in. Photo by Daniel Greer. Courtesy the artist and Charles Moffett.

Keiran Brennan Hinton, Fishers Island Living Room, 2025. Oil on linen, 9 x 12 in. Photo by Zeshan Ahmed. Courtesy the artist and Charles Moffett.

Leslie Smith III (b. 1985) was born in Silver Spring, MD and lives and works in Madison, WI.  Smith’s interests lie in our conscious effort to alter personal perception. Recent works explore Abstraction’s inherent personal and political properties as they relate to broadening notions of Black representation and expression. Smith creates paintings with a mindset that it’s possible to present a new interpretation of contemporary abstraction. One with expectations of a different sensibility than that offered by the 1950’s and 60’s, he offers an alternative worldview; one of inclusion and acceptance. 

Leslie Smith III earned a BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA at the Yale School of Art. Smith exhibits nationally and internationally. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond; the Birmingham Museum of Art; the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, Birmingham, AL; and the FRAC Auvergne, France.

Leslie Smith III, Ancestral Meeting, 2025 Oil on shaped canvas and sewn upholstery fabric, 36 x 45 1/2 in 91.4 x 115.6 cm. Copyright The Artist

Leslie Smith III,  Under the Skin of Light, 2025 Oil on shaped canvas 45 1/2 x 36 in 115.6 x 91.4 cm, Copyright The Artist

Leslie Smith III, Night Scene From a Moving Train Window, 2025, Oil on shaped canvas and sewn upholstery fabric 36 x 45 1/2 in 91.4 x 115.6 cm. Copyright The Artist

Charisse Pearlina Weston (b. 1988, Houston, TX; based in Brooklyn, NY) is a conceptual artist who works across sculpture, writing, installation, and photography. Utilizing techniques such as concealment, repetition, and enfoldment, her work posits Black interior life as a central site of Black resistance.

Weston often integrates glass into her work due to its inherent nature. Whether it be through photographs, fragments incorporated into a canvas, or an element within a sculpture, the duality of the material speaks to Weston’s understanding of Black resistance. Both fragile and susceptible to shatter at the hand of an act of violence, glass is also highly malleable despite that risk. Etched and embedded into the surface of her works are poetic fragments, as well as historical and autobiographical images. These intimate moments are often concealed and ensnared through intentional folds, offering a layer of protection and privacy to the object on display.

The artist writes: "Central to the artistic methodology is the reuse and re-articulation of materials.” From photographs of past installations or fragments of discarded glass, Weston formulates “yet another representation of meaning’s capacity to shatter." For the artist, "these recurrences develop into new forms that represent the ways in which repetition is both a symbol of black cultural production and its reliance on an order of temporal engagement in which the second time encodes an emergent originality.”

Charisse Pearlina Weston, untitled long before the squeeze, 2024 inkjet print on Hahnemühle canvas, matte medium, epoxy, frit, glass 44 x 132 inches (each) 88 x 132 inches (overall, unframed). © Charisse Pearlina Weston. Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and Patron Gallery, Chicago

Charisse Pearlina Weston III. final test of the prefixal squeeze, 2025 inkjet print on Hahnmühle canvas, oil stick, frit, epoxy, silicon carbide 49 x 74 x 9 inches. © Charisse Pearlina Weston. Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and Patron Gallery, Chicago

Charisse Pearlina Weston, untitled (after the squeeze and the fuse and the lift), 2025, fused Mirropane, Solarcool breeze surveillance glass, and Solexia glass panels with embedded and oxidized, photographic decal, lead, 26 x 51 1/4 x 28 inches (overall), 33 1/2 x 60 x 40 inches (with pedestal). © Charisse Pearlina Weston. Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and Patron Gallery, Chicago

Katy Stone is best known for her large-scale installations and wall sculptures. Working primarily in aluminum, Dura-Lar and plexiglass, her artworks are a proposition to reconsider landscape painting as an environmental, immersive dynamic. Suspended, or set in relief, the artist’s drawn, cutout, painted, and stitched-together elements possess a vibrancy, a spirited energy and effect. Echoing fleeting clouds, falling leaves, moving water, and scattered light, they spill, climb and spread across the wall. This mimesis of nature locates the work in an earthly sphere but in a palpably conjured world created via the distinctive visual language she has developed over the decades.  Conveying a movement from one state to another, from one moment to another, from one material to another, her compositions become universal metaphors for phenomena in nature through which we can glimpse the sublime.

She received her BFA from Iowa State University and her MFA from the University of Washington and lives and works in Seattle.

Red Terrain. 2025 © Katy Stone; Courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York.

Cedar Fall and Willow Wisp (installation view) oil on aluminum. 2025 © Katy Stone; Courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York.

Cloud Dissolve/Pond (installation view) oil on aluminum. 2025 © Katy Stone; Courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York.

Lamar Peterson (b. 1974, St. Petersburg, Florida) is a painter whose work explores the psychological and social space between refuge and exposure. For more than two decades, he has rendered the everyday experiences of Black life with a language that merges stylized figuration, domestic ritual, and surreal distortion. Across both painting and collage, Peterson creates scenes where tranquility and unease coexist: suburban gardens bloom into uncanny environments, rooms soften and dissolve into landscape, and figures pursue moments of rest and care even as the outside world presses near.

Peterson’s visual vocabulary ranges from cartoon inflections and bold color to pared-down forms that verge on the symbolic. In his hands, a gesture—cooking a meal, tending a plant, pausing in thought—becomes a quietly radical act of autonomy. His subjects often appear in transitional spaces: windows, thresholds, and gardens that double as emotional terrain, reflecting the fragile distance between sanctuary and scrutiny, vulnerability and strength.

Peterson has held solo exhibitions at Deitch Projects, New York; Carl Kostyál, Stockholm; and Fredericks & Freiser, New York, where he is represented. He has also had institutional solo exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem; the Orlando Museum of Art; the University Art Museum at SUNY Albany; and the Rochester Art Center, among others. His work has been featured in group exhibitions at SITE Santa Fe, The Drawing Center, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, the Katonah Museum of Art, the International Print Center New York, and the Yale University Art Gallery.

Peterson received his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2001. He lives and works in Minneapolis, where he is Associate Professor of Drawing & Painting at the University of Minnesota.

Lamar Peterson, The Proud Gardener, 2021, Oil on canvas, 70 x 85 inches. Courtesy Fredericks & Freiser, New York, Photo Credit: Cary Whittier

Lamar Peterson, The Worrier, 2024, Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 inches. Courtesy Fredericks & Freiser, New York, Photo Credit: Cary Whittier

Lamar Peterson, Exhilarated, 2025, Mixed media and collage on paper, 17 x 12 inches. Courtesy Fredericks & Freiser, New York, Photo Credit: Cary Whittier

Amiko Li (b. 1993, Shanghai) is an interdisciplinary artist who translates everyday stories and encounters into film, installation, and photography, to explore and contextualize the underlying complexities and themes, such as intimacy, waiting, and value.

Li’s recent Exhibition and performance include Center for Art, Research, and Alliance, New York; The Shed, New York; Asia Art Archive, New York; Ulster Museum, Ireland; Haus der Elektronischen Künste, Switzerland; UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, China; Power Station of Art, China. Li’s work has been supported through fellowships and residencies at Delfina Foundation, London; Triangle Arts Association, New York; and Kunstlerhaus Dortmund, Germany.

Amiko Li Kai, 2023, Inkjet print in aluminum frame, 20 3/16 x 16 3/16 x 1 in. Edition of 3 plus 1 AP

Amiko Li, Another Brief Moment, 2020, Inkjet print in aluminum frame 16 3/16 x 20 3/16 x 1 in. Edition of 3 plus 1 AP

Amiko Li, 12:54:21, 2021, Inkjet print in aluminum frame, 16 3/16 x 20 3/16 x 1 in. Edition of 3 plus 1 AP

My Pet Ram is pleased to present Towards the Sun, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Heather Drayzen, on view through November 9, 2025. This marks the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The gallery is located at 48 Hester Street on the Lower East Side. Gallery hours are Thursday–Sunday, 12–6 PM, and by appointment.

Heather Drayzen (b. 1985, San Antonio, Texas) is a painter known for her intimate, small-scale depictions of quiet domestic life, often featuring herself and her loved ones. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Drayzen received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 2007, and earned an MAT from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2008.

Winter Bath, 2025, 14 x 18 inches, Oil on linen

Winnie Rainbow, 2024, Oil on Linen, 20 x 16 inches

Giverny, 2025, Oil on Linen 18 x 14 inches