NEW YORK, NY (April 22, 2025) On Thursday, April 10th, in the heart of Chelsea’s art district, Gallery Henoch celebrated the opening of Landscapes. When I walked into the gallery, New York City’s rainy-day humidity seemed to evaporate completely as I was enveloped into such vast vignettes of the natural world.The group show features a breadth of artists and interpretations of Earth’s surface, from pastoral to power lines, in broad brushstrokes and precisely placed detail work.
Featured painter Rebecca Stenn is a multi-hyphenate artist— she has been a professional dancer, choreographer, and educator throughout her life. All of these artistic practices bleed into her paintings, which are driven by strong lines and abstraction, yet maintain a level of naturalistic fluidity. “I’ve always loved the beauty and clarity of lines and have been especially drawn to them in my choreography,” Stenn explains. “It felt natural to lean into lines in my painting, there is such motion and continuity in a line and there is also the joy and synergy of one color leaning up against another. I see lines and geometry in every landscape I encounter.”
A definitive highlight of the exhibition is Stenn’s sprawling Queen’s Robe Triptych. The lines in the piece create such beautiful movement, pulling the eye across the canvases as if taking in the view itself. Contrasts of colors create breathtaking, abstracted striations across the mountains. In the sky and water, Stenn’s line work is more subtle, mirroring the actual horizontal paths of a winding river and cloudy, mid-sunset sky. The brushwork, though at points characterized by sharp points and clear color blocking, has such an organic feeling to it that lends itself to the landscapes Stenn paints, shaped not by man but the forces of nature. The wide, openness of the triptych feels like a breath of fresh air.
“Recently, I have been painting the rugged and majestic terrain of the Columbia Gorge in Northern Oregon,” Stenn reveals. “My brother and his family live in Hood River, a small town on the banks of the Columbia River, which cuts like a canyon, through Southern Washington and Northern Oregon. Every summer, for many years, I have visited them. Each trip, I breathe in this landscape in all its magnificent and regal beauty – the tiered rock faces, windswept mountains and winding, gem-toned river. It is waiting to be painted.” Stenn explores these significant places in her pieces for the exhibition, including paintings Dog Mountain and Crown Point.
Morning is Stenn’s most abstracted work in this show, shedding her signature warm, punchy colors in favor of cool greys, blues, and light peach. Even in this far from figurative space, its lines guide your eye to trace a winding river through a mountainous gorge, just as the first light of day is about to break across the sky. This painting sits in the stillness of early morning, paying close attention to shadow and light. Stenn’s work across the collection seems to always have this kind of careful attention, as she focuses on seeing, interpreting, and translating a vista onto the canvas as authentic to experience as possible.
Additionally, I had the opportunity to speak to featured artist Jon MacAdam, whose marshland studies and panoramic landscapes are shaped by studies and sentimentality. “I paint outside, so I have a small setup where I’ll do a study that’s 5” by 7”, really small,” MacAdam says about his process, “Then I’ll take that into the studio and make it larger.”
MacAdam’s panoramas of Vermont and the Hudson River Valley look out with a vast point of view, encompassing a horizon line in one long, horizontal frame. They are highly specific and precise to real life without relying on fine detail. Specifically in the panoramic works, I was reminded of Paul Cézanne’s landscapes, especially considering how structures are implied with loose post-impressionist flair. MacAdam recalls Cézanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire series as an inspiration, explaining that the extended study of one singular place is something he is very familiar with: “I did the same thing with this place called Hog Island. I painted it 40 times from different angles. I love to explore one area really well and get to know it intimately, like people, if you know someone really well.”
His marsh paintings are inspired by a particular landscape that MacAdam knows very intimately. “I think everyone has special places they go to. They’ll keep going back there because it’s refreshing to their soul. For me, that little creek is something I’ve taken my kids to, and it’s special to us. It becomes almost a spiritual place, where you get away from the world.” It comes through that he has spent a good deal of time in these places. In these paintings, MacAdam renders a very vibrant tranquility, built up with layers of glazing to bring out the true hues of life.
Another standout from the group show is Anita Mazzucca’s work, which is incredibly detailed— deeply stylized but still quite realistic. Her piece Trimmed Trees looked like a photograph from far away until I walked up to observe it. The closer you get to the canvas, the more Mazzucca’s handiwork reveals itself to you. The contours and hollows of the tree bark, the thousands of highlighted leaves painted onto of dark green shadow, each careful blade of tall wheatgrass bending in the wind… I cannot stress enough how impressive it is to see in person. Mazzucca’s most showstopping piece, in my opinion, is A Field of Wild Sunflowers, which leans slightly more into stylization. Pointillist-adjacent, the density of this field is so texturally interesting. In the background, I love the shapes and patterns that the trees' leaves grow in, accentuated by the intense black shadow cast beneath them. It is really awe-inspiring just how much thought goes into every little shape in these paintings.
Gallery Henoch’s Landscapes is certainly not one to miss— in addition to the artists covered, I highly recommend looking for Ioanna Stefou’s deep and flowing ocean paintings and John Evans’s abstracted, gritty landscapes when you go to see the exhibition. Landscapes will run through May 3 at Gallery Henoch, 555 West 25th St., New York, NY.
