Art, Art History and the Process within.
A collection of writings by Mark Rengers
Part 3: rON thURSTON wATERCOLORS: bETWEEN rEPRESENTATION & aBSTRACTION
4/28/2026
Watercolor painting is often associated with spontaneity, but strong work depends on structure, planning, and clarity. In the work of Ron Thurston, these elements remain essential, even when they are not immediately visible.
Continue Reading
Thurston’s background in commercial illustration plays a key role in his approach. Trained at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, he developed a foundation in composition, value, and visual impact, where images must communicate quickly. That experience continues to influence his watercolor paintings, which are designed to engage the viewer immediately while allowing the image to unfold over time.
His process begins before the painting itself. Compositions are refined in advance, often through digital studies, with careful attention to structure and balance. By the time the brush touches the paper, many of the key decisions have already been made. This allows the finished work to feel loose and intuitive, while remaining grounded in a strong underlying design.
This emphasis on structure connects Thurston to a broader watercolor tradition. Influences such as Frank Webb and Bill Vrscak demonstrate how abstract design, value relationships, and composition can drive a painting. Thurston builds on this foundation, allowing the image to open rather than fully resolve.
His paintings often exist between representation and abstraction. Forms soften, edges dissolve, and the subject is only partially defined. Thurston has described this approach as keeping “one foot in reality,” where the image remains recognizable but never fully fixed. This creates a more active viewing experience, encouraging the viewer to spend time with the work rather than understanding it immediately.
At the core of this approach is a clear goal. The painting must first capture attention. If it holds the viewer, even briefly, it creates an opportunity for deeper engagement. The structure of the composition supports this experience, even if it is not consciously recognized.
Ron Thurston’s solo exhibition, Mysteriously Optimistic, opens May 1 with a reception from 6–8pm at Mark Rengers Gallery. The exhibition runs through May 30, with an artist talk scheduled for May 13 at 5:30pm.
Part 2: Edward Hopper Watercolors: How Design and Light Create Immediate Impact
4/23/2026
Watercolor is often misunderstood as a loose or purely expressive medium. In reality, strong watercolor painting depends on structure, planning, and clarity.
Artists like Edward Hopper demonstrate how watercolor can be designed to communicate immediately. His work shows that successful compositions are not built through detail, but through the careful arrangement of shape, light, and space.
Continue Reading
In the early 1920s, Hopper created a series of watercolors in Gloucester, Massachusetts, focusing on architecture and quiet coastal scenes. These paintings feel simple at first glance. A house. A wall. A window. But that simplicity is intentional. Each element is reduced to its essential form. Large shapes, strong contrasts, and clearly defined areas of light allow the viewer to understand the image within seconds.
This immediacy is not accidental. In watercolor, decisions must be made before the painting begins. Once the brush touches the paper, there is little opportunity to revise. Hopper’s work reflects this discipline. His compositions are resolved in advance, allowing the final image to feel direct and effortless.
Light plays a central role in this process. Instead of adding light through paint, watercolor relies on preserving the white of the paper. Hopper uses light as a structural element, organizing space and defining form. Shadows become shapes. Walls become planes. The composition holds together through these relationships.
What is left out is just as important as what is included. By reducing detail and simplifying edges, Hopper creates clarity. The viewer is not overwhelmed with information. Instead, the painting captures attention quickly and holds it through balance and design.
This approach marks a shift in how watercolor can function. Rather than simply recording what is seen, it becomes a medium of intention, where composition is constructed to be understood immediately.
In Part 3, we will explore how these same principles evolve in the work of Ron Thurston, whose upcoming exhibition Mysteriously Optimistic opens May 1 at Mark Rengers Gallery.
Part 1: Watercolor —
A History of Control, and Letting Go
4/22/2026
At Mark Rengers Gallery, an exhibition of watercolor paintings by Ron Thurston will open on May 1st. Understanding what makes watercolor unique offers a deeper way to experience the work on view. Watercolor painting is often misunderstood as a simple or casual medium, but historically, it has required a high level of control, planning, and technical skill.
Continue Reading
Used early on for travel sketches, scientific studies, and architectural drawings, watercolor was valued for its speed and portability.
However, artists like J. M. W. Turner helped elevate watercolor into a serious artistic medium by using it to explore light, atmosphere, and movement in ways oil paint could not.
Unlike oil or acrylic painting, watercolor behaves differently on the surface. Instead of sitting on top, pigment is carried by water into the paper itself. This means that marks are difficult to reverse, light must be preserved from the beginning, and timing and moisture affect every edge and transition.
Because of this, watercolor requires careful planning before the painting even begins.
Artists such as Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent demonstrated how structure and restraint are essential to successful watercolor work. What often appears loose or spontaneous is usually the result of deliberate decisions about composition, light, and timing.
This principle continues in contemporary watercolor. Artists like Louise De Masi show how preserving white paper and controlling washes creates clarity and luminosity. Similarly, Andrew Wyeth used restraint to allow untouched areas of paper to become light within the image.
Today, watercolor remains one of the most direct and unforgiving painting methods. It offers little room for correction, which makes intention and preparation essential.
At Mark Rengers Gallery, this balance between control and release can be seen in the upcoming exhibition of watercolor paintings by Ron Thurston.
Visitors are invited to experience the exhibition and see how these principles unfold in practice.
Part 4 of 4: The Space Where Things Are Still Becoming
4/2/2026
In Part 1, we began with Abbott, grounding ourselves in observation and the act of looking. In Part 2, through Christine Lorenz, that structure began to loosen, revealing a space that felt less fixed. In Part 3, we stepped back to consider Cézanne and the philosophical shift toward perception as something unstable and continuous. Now, in Part 4, we arrive at the work of Kristen Letts Kovak, where that instability is no longer a question, but a condition to work within.
Continue Reading
Kristen Letts Kovak is a Pittsburgh-based artist, professor, and curator whose work explores the shifting boundary between representation and abstraction. Trained in painting and drawing at Mercyhurst University and the Maryland Institute College of Art, she currently serves as Senior Associate Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University. Her paintings and drawings have been exhibited widely in museums and galleries across the country, investigating the complex relationship between perception, pattern, and the instability of what we see.
There is a moment, standing in front of one of Kristen Letts Kovak’s paintings, where the instinct to define what you are seeing begins to fall away.
At first, it is subtle.
A shape suggests something familiar. A space begins to feel like it might resolve into something known. The mind reaches, as it always does, to organize, to name, to understand.
And then it doesn’t quite hold.
Part 3 of 4: The Doubt That Changed What We See
3/31/2026
There is a quiet moment in the history of painting when something begins to shift. Not dramatically. Not all at once. But enough that, once it happens, it cannot be undone. Up until that point, painting had largely operated under an agreement. However expressive or interpretive it became, there was still an underlying trust that the world could be understood through observation. That space would hold. That objects would remain intact. That what we see could, in some fundamental way, be relied upon. And then that certainty begins to loosen.
Continue Reading
In Part 2, we see this tension begin to emerge in Christine Lorenz’s work. Structure is still present. Space still exists. But it no longer feels entirely fixed. There is a subtle instability, an awareness that what we are seeing may not be as settled as it first appears.
That feeling has a longer history.
At the end of the nineteenth century, Paul Cézanne begins to question something deceptively simple. Not what he is looking at, but how it holds together. How a form can feel both solid and shifting. How a table can tilt, how an apple can be both round and somehow not entirely stable in space.
A Parallel Exhibition: Teaching, Practice, and the Next Generation of Artists
3/28/2026
Presented by Mark Rengers Gallery in collaboration with Sweetwater Center for the Arts, A Showcase of Sweetwater’s 2026 Master Class Artists offers a different, but equally important perspective on artistic practice. If Ambiguous Boundaries asks how we learn to see, this exhibition asks how that way of seeing is passed on. At the center of the show are two artists whose work is grounded not only in their own practice, but in their role as teachers: Ron Donoughe and Kelsie McNair, this year’s Master Class instructors at Sweetwater. Continue reading here.
Part 2 of 4: ChristINE Lorenz
3/26/2026
There are moments, quiet ones, often unannounced, when the world shifts. Not dramatically. Not in a way that calls attention to itself. But subtly, almost imperceptibly, the familiar begins to feel unfamiliar. The surface of things gives way to something deeper. A texture becomes a landscape. A material becomes a question. For Christine Lorenz, this shift is not an accident. It is the work. Continue reading here.
Part 1 of 4: Berenice Abbott
3/24/2026
When asked about influence, Christine Lorenz did not hesitate. One of the first names she returned to was Berenice Abbott. That instinct offers a place to begin. Abbott’s work provides a foundation for understanding not only Lorenz’s practice, but the larger question this exhibition explores. She approached photography not simply as an art form, but as a way of making sense of reality itself. Continue reading here.
Outlier - Brian Johnson & Patrick Lee
3/12/2026
Outliers brings Patrick Lee and Brian Johnson together not simply as two painters, but as two distinct ways of seeing. Their works share a commitment to attention, to the emotional weight of light, and to the belief that painting can hold experience in a way nothing else can. Continue reading here.
BRIAN JOHNSON: THE PRACTICE THAT SAVES HIM
3/9/2026
There are artists who choose painting, and then there are artists who discover, often slowly and sometimes painfully, that painting has chosen them. When we spoke with Brian Johnson, what became clear was not simply his commitment to the medium. It was the way painting has functioned as a steadying force in his life. A discipline. A vocation. But also, at times, a form of survival. Continue reading here.
the light that refuses to hurry
3/2/2026
There is a particular kind of light that only exists for a few minutes each evening. It is not day, and it is not night. It hovers. It softens edges. It makes ordinary things feel briefly enchanted. Painters have chased this light for centuries, but few have captured it with the quiet patience of John Singer Sargent in Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (1885–86). Continue reading here.
PaTRICK LEE AND THE COURAGE TO MAKE A MESS
2/23/2026
I’ve learned something working with painters: the people who really know how to make the work tend to be the least precious about it. They’ll stand in front of something that took them days, weeks, sometimes months, and say, almost casually: I might paint over it. Continue reading here.
When the Table Refused to Behave
2/16/2026
In 1893, a French painter set a table. A bottle of wine. A basket of apples. A folded cloth draped carelessly over the edge. At first glance, it is quiet. Domestic. Unremarkable. The kind of still life that had been painted for centuries. And yet something is unsettled. Continue reading here.
Part IIIc: The Circle Widens
2/5/2026
Before turning to the deeper ideas that shape Romare Bearden’s work, it helps to situate the artist himself. Romare Howard Bearden (1911–1988) was an American artist, writer, and cultural thinker whose career spanned much of the twentieth century. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, he came of age during the Great Migration and spent formative years between New York City and Pittsburgh, attending Peabody High School before returning to New York for his studies. Continue reading here.
Part IIIb: The Work
2/2/2026
Before considering the discipline and material intelligence of his work, it helps to situate McCleary “Bunch” Washington (1937–2008) within his historical and artistic context. Born in Philadelphia, Washington trained at the Barnes Foundation and the Philadelphia Museum School of Art before moving to New York City in the early 1960s. A painter, collage artist, and scholar, he belonged to a generation of African American artists whose careers unfolded largely outside the institutions that defined mainstream recognition at the time. Continue reading here.
Part IIIa: The Human Story
2/1/2026
Liz de Souza is a writer, researcher, and cultural steward whose work centers on the preservation and interpretation of African American visual art history. The daughter of artist and author M. Bunch Washington, she grew up immersed in the lives and practices of artists, later emerging as a creative voice in her own right. Continue reading here.
Part II: The Moment After - The Big Splash
1/20/2026
The Big Splash captures a fraction of a second. A burst of water erupts in a pristine California pool. The diver is gone. The cause has already disappeared. What remains is evidence, not action. The painting does not ease us in. It confronts us with aftermath. Continue reading here.
Part I: Inside The Red Studio
1/12/2026
Before we try to understand a painting, we should let it happen to us. Not explain it. Not place it neatly into history. Not decide too quickly whether we like it. Just notice what it does to our body, our breath, our sense of space. Continue reading here.
COLLECTIVE GESTURES
10/29/2025
In the weeks before winter, when days contract and light softens, small gestures take on new meaning. A shared glance, a hand on a shoulder, a letter written instead of texted—all reminders that connection rarely depends on grandeur. It’s built in the quiet, the particular, the small. Continue reading here.
Quiet Spaces: Dan Marsula and the Legacy of Edward Redfield
10/3/2025
Quiet Spaces, now on view at Mark Rengers Gallery through October 25, invites visitors to step into a world where light, land, and memory are given room to breathe. Among the most compelling works in this exhibition are two landscapes — Grazing and Colorado Landscape — that together reveal the heart of Dan Marsula’s artistic philosophy. Continue reading here.
Quiet Spaces
9/11/2025
The headlining work of Dan Marsula’s upcoming exhibition is Gray Day (2025), a painting that captures what might otherwise go unnoticed. “In solitude on a gray day,” Marsula explains, “I tried to capture the quiet shifts of color in the muted light. Without the sun’s brightness, the world revealed its subtler tones—the pale blues hidden in the clouds, the soft browns, the faint green that lingered in the grass. What first seemed monochromatic slowly displayed a quiet richness, a reminder that beauty often hides in restraint.” Continue reading here.
Looking Closer: A Conversation Beyond the Canvas with Kristin Divers
8/7/2025
After publishing my recent interview with Master Pastelist Kristin Divers, I started receiving thoughtful questions—ones that suggested readers were craving more. Who inspires Kristin? What artists influence her decisions in color, composition, and subject matter? And why this painting, at this moment? Continue reading here.
Finding Joy in the Smallest Moments: A Conversation with Kristin Divers
7/23/2025
It starts with a nest. Not one she sought out, but one that found her—hidden in a hanging flower basket, nearly missed during a walk across her own yard. That unexpected discovery became a painting, and then a meditation. Not just on birds or spring or the circle of life—but on what happens when we pause, pay attention, and look for meaning in the ordinary. Continue reading here.
What is this for?
6/5/2025
There’s something unmistakably magnetic about Eva Conrad’s ceramic work. It doesn’t whisper from a pedestal — it announces itself. Her vessels push against the expectations of pottery, of sculpture, of functionality and form. They’re loud in their intention and quiet in their confidence. They confuse, attract, and ultimately compel viewers to stop, circle back, and ask: “What is this for?” Continue reading here.
garden party ii
5/23/2025
What happens when you slow down and spend time with just one painting? This piece is part of an ongoing series from Mark Rengers Gallery that zooms in—not out—to ask deeper questions about a single work. In this case, Garden Party II by Carlos Gamez de Francisco offers more than beauty; it offers a layered visual meditation on identity, history, and the quiet power of concealment. Continue reading here.
What Power Doesn’t Want You to See
5/3/2025
After Napoleon’s heroics, Goya painted the price. Not long ago, we looked at Napoleon Crossing the Alps—Jacques-Louis David’s portrait of power in full control. Napoleon, rearing on horseback, wrapped in drama and destiny. A myth made to last. Continue reading here.
the art of power
4/23/2025
In 1801, French painter Jacques-Louis David was commissioned to create an image of General Napoleon Bonaparte that would inspire admiration, fear, and loyalty. The result—Napoleon Crossing the Alps—is one of the most iconic examples of political propaganda ever painted. Continue reading here.
Everyone Deserves a Portrait: Carlos Gamez de Francisco
4/16/2025
Carlos’s work lives at the intersection of the historical and the contemporary, where opulent aesthetics of the past meet irreverent nods to modern life. When I sat down with him recently, it quickly became clear that this blending of eras is no accident—it’s rooted in a deep reverence for classical art, balanced by a personal mission to challenge the exclusivity of that tradition. Continue reading here.
understanding guernica
4/9/2025
How lucky am I to live in Sewickley, Pennsylvania—where I can open a gallery, hang beauty on the walls, and welcome neighbors into a space of peace and creativity. This isn’t by chance. It’s because of those who came before us—our ancestors, fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters—who fought for peace and freedom. The kind still being fought for today by our Ukrainian neighbors across the globe. Continue reading here.
how to choose the right art
3/26/2025
When it comes to purchasing art, the first question many people ask me is, "How do I find art that I like?" The process of discovering art that resonates with you should be fun and personal. Whether you’re looking to add a statement piece to your living room or find something small and subtle for your bedroom, the key is to explore art in a way that sparks your interest visually. Here’s a simple guide to help you start this exciting journey! Continue reading here.
from garden to gallery
3/17/2025
Botanical art is one of the rare artistic disciplines that bridges the gap between science and aesthetics, blending meticulous accuracy with visual beauty. Unlike most other art forms, which are open to interpretation and emotion, botanical art is about truth and documentation. Throughout history, artists have worked alongside scientists to illustrate plants with precision, ensuring that botanical knowledge is both accessible and enduring. Continue reading here.
erin kaya: exploring the world through art
2/28/2025
Chicago-based artist Erin Kaya is making waves in the contemporary art world with her bold abstract compositions and structured geometric patterns. Her work, deeply influenced by her travels, the cityscape, and historical art movements, invites viewers into a world of color, order, and movement. In a recent interview, Kaya shared insights into her creative process, inspirations, and the personal philosophy behind her work. Continue reading here.
2/24/2025
Now in my early sixties, I find myself exactly where I want to be—content, fulfilled, and immersed in the world of art. As the owner of a gallery and frame shop, I spend my days surrounded by beauty, embarking on new creative projects, including writing, making art and collaborating with creative colleagues who have become dear friends. My success isn’t measured in wealth or accolades but in the richness of my experiences and the deep appreciation I have for the artistic process. Continue reading here.