Slab of Light (oil on panel, 24×30”) by Mary Giammrino, Four Eleven Gallery
The 2025 Gallery Season Preview
by Rebecca M. Alvin
There is no one word to describe that moment when you find yourself drawn into a work of art. It can happen to you wandering through the major museums of the world—the Louvre, the Met, or the Museum of Modern Art. You are taking it all in, the enormous amount of work from throughout the history of art, acknowledging their greatness or at least understanding why something is considered important, and then you find yourself in front of a painting that seems to pull you into it. You can’t look away.
It can be in a sculpture garden, at a movie, or a performance of some kind. Or it can happen at a little art gallery around the corner. The element of surprise at experiencing something you didn’t expect to be so moved by adds to your reaction to the work. And it could be for any reason. Sometimes it’s because there is an expression on the face of the model the artist painted, or the way the lines and shapes interact in an abstract work tempts your intellect with new ideas about things in other areas of your life. Or the artist has rendered that patch of dunes you love with such painstaking accuracy that you are awe-struck.
The art in a Provincetown gallery can be so many things to so many different people, even as much of it will not move you one way or the other. But it’s those moments where you are transfixed by a work of art that cause you to return again and again in search of the next piece that will turn your mind upside down and leave its mark on you for days afterward.
In times such as these, where we are all most often preoccupied with problems in the world, division in our country, and both fear and rage in our communities, we come to art looking for both answers to and an escape from the questions in our minds. As artist James Frederick put it, “Art can be a psyche soother. The acquisition of meaningful art can feel defiant in the face of uncertain political and economic times, resulting in the collector feeling empowered.”
This guide to some of the highlights of the 2025 gallery season was compiled to aid you in your search for escape, for meaning, for empowerment, or just enjoyment. They are arranged in loose categories for organizational reasons, but don’t let labels keep you from experiencing work you don’t normally gravitate to, even as it guides you to your favorites. It does not even come close to including every gallery show or experience of art in town, so check back with the galleries in town regularly to see what new works they offer, whether you’re buying or just looking. We have an amazing gallery scene in Provincetown, with numerous galleries offering free public receptions, most of the time with the artists in attendance, every Friday night. And their doors are open to everyone throughout the week and in between exhibitions, as well.
Nature
For many artists and art lovers, art is a way for humans to represent and respond to our natural environment. Whether that means evoking nature through biomorphic compositions that abstract what we see around us in the dunes, the ocean, or the forests or attempting to accurately replicate what we see in that stunning sunset or the breathtaking landscape around Pilgrim Lake, or something in between pure abstraction and pure representation. This season, as in most seasons in Provincetown, there is no shortage of art that reflects nature highlighted in gallery and museum exhibitions.
This month On Center Gallery offers an interesting pair of artists in their Peace in a Restless World exhibition (June 27 – July 2). Kevin Box and Lorraine DeProspo work in entirely different mediums, but their work has tonal connection. While Box constructs metal structures in the forms of origami forms, such as the crane, symbolizing peace and tranquility, DeProspo creates paintings of the sky and sea with oil and cold wax that evoke the sense of awe we have in nature, as well as the ambiguous or conflicted feelings that can come along with that. These paintings need to be seen in-person to get the texture of the wax, which will add an additional layer you cannot really see on the page or on a website. There is a spiritual sense to both bodies of work in this show, which curators Scot Presly and Jill Rothenberg-Simmons created to offer “a serene counterpoint to the noise of the outside world.”
Also opening this month, Alden Gallery features three artists whose work reflect our natural environment in different ways (June 27 – July 10). Anne Salas, Robert Glisson, and Linda Reedy each see our world through their own artistic lenses. Salas’ compositions burst with floral euphoria, from peonies to foxgloves. Although Glisson works with oils, his paintings have a sort of watery quality to them, blurring the edges of his forms. And Reedy offers us scenes in which the evidence of human beings is all around although the figures themselves are either absent or simply minor forms in a larger environmental setting, allowing us to put ourselves in them.
Known for his landscapes and also for adult-themed coloring books, James Frederick is also adept at painting abstract representations of nature imbued with human emotion, such as the works he will be showing at his Frederick Studio in Analog Bliss (June 27 – July 6), which remind us he says “express the lost benefits of a simpler time when [we] could focus and indulge in original thought.”
And later in the season, Four Eleven Gallery offers a show of paintings by Mary Giammarino, a plein-air painter with impressionist leanings. She shows her new work in an exhibition titled Hope to the Last: (August 8 – 21) with Elspeth Slayter, whose work is more abstract and about inner landscapes rather than the external ones Giammarino paints. But both artists share a love of color that makes their works leap off the canvas with their vivid hues..
Towns & Cityscapes
Our environment is not only comprised of nature, though. Built environments, man-made structures, and whole neighborhoods can be represented in cityscapes or quiet village scenes, sometimes sharing space with natural elements, other times striking in the lack of nature within them.
On view now through July 8 at Schoolhouse Gallery there is an incredible suite of photographs by Cindy Kleine, as part of a larger group show that includes artists Ramon Alcolea, Rebecca Doughty, William Hamlin, and Nona Hershey, as well. Kleine’s series, Night and Day, features images of city buildings, interiors of apartments, and even the greenery outside the buildings shot at different times of day, providing a multi-image portrait of life both inside and outside Kleine’s New York City apartment in the Spring of 2020 when all of our lives seemed to stop. The works resonate beyond just the Covid experience, though, as they are beautiful, mysterious prints.
A completely different set of images of an artist’s surroundings can be seen July 26 – 31 at Egeli Gallery in an exhibition of paintings by John Clayton, whose work features bright, pastel colors evoking summer here in Provincetown. Like Kleine’s work, these images do not generally include human forms within them, but the images of Captain Jack’s Wharf, Dyer Street, and various nooks and crannies in Provincetown are less mysterious and more celebratory; they don’t need people cluttering them up as they are lush visions of blooming flowers and trees in the light of the season we all crave year-round.
And in August Galeria Cubana presents a striking three-person exhibition, Resonancia (Resonance), featuring three Cuban artists: William Acosta, Aneet R. Fontes, and Sebastian Leal, August 14 – 25. Fontes will be showing her popular cityscapes that feature reflective surfaces such as puddles and glass, as well as some new charcoal drawings of various cities. While Fontes gives us her portrayals of Boston, Havana, and Provincetown, Leal focuses on Provincetown scenes. And Acosta creates interesting superimpositions of the human form over city scenes for his part.
Objects & Still Lifes
One of the traditional subjects for painters is the still life, a set-up arrangement of items the artist wishes to contemplate, often for their compositional aspects, but also for the relationships between the various items that have been placed together. Often these elements are from nature, but they don’t have to be. And while we may think of them as primarily done in the representational mode, an abstract still life can also be a marvelous compositional study.
At Gary Marotta Fine Art Kimberly Witham presents her various approaches to the still life in a show called Vignettes and Visions (July 18 – August 28). These photographs, which she says are inspired by Dutch paintings, “celebrate small moments of ephemeral beauty: light falling on petals, feathers, metal and glass.”
Sometimes objects are celebrated and presented to us in a different form, though. For example, Laura Plad has created a suite of sculptures or colorful wigs for her show, Wig II, August 14 – 26, at Dozen Gallery, as a followup to her successful show of them here last year during Carnival. Vibrant and fabulous, these unique sculptures will make you smile, something art can do as well as it can move us to tears.
Also in August, Studio Lacombe brings in artist Brian Kenny for a show of small still life paintings “shiny things imbued with queer desire,” according to gallerist Gaston Lacomb. Examples include vintage soccer shorts, poppers bottles, and sexy floral arrangements. That show runs August 8 – 14.
The Provincetown Art Colony
As most art lovers in Provincetown know, the town’s artistic history is engraved into the art scene here, with exhibitions featuring Provincetown painters, printmakers, and all manner of artists who spent time here on the Cape tip, particularly at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM), which offers a course in Provincetown art history with its many shows that span the more-than-100-year legacy. This season, of particular note are two historical exhibitions at PAAM. The first is a show of drawings by Edward Hopper and Marsden Hartley, two giants of modern art who did significant work on the Outer Cape. This show (July 5 – August 17) is followed by Blanche Lazzell: Becoming an American Modernist (August 29 – January 4, 2026), featuring the signature white-line prints Lazzell—and Provincetown— is famous for.
Like PAAM, Berta Walker Gallery features many historically significant Provincetown artists, both contemporary and from the old days, throughout the season. PAAM is also presenting a contemporary solo show, Joe Diggs: Evolving Circles (July 18 – September 7) in connection with a concurrent show of Diggs’ work at Berta Walker Gallery around the corner July 25 – August 17. An artist with deep roots in Cape Cod, going back several generations, Diggs’ work includes both abstraction and realism, moving back and forth with ease over his multi-decade career not only in his approach, but in medium. Often inspired by family and African-American histories, the work is rich and personal depicting the multifaceted Cape Cod history of which he is a part.
Another two galleries that are well known for historical collections are Julie Heller Gallery, with galleries on the beach in the center of town as well as in the east end, and Bakker Gallery, which features works in estates represented by Jim Bakker. It is well worth it to visit these beacons of Provincetown art history to revisit the past as you stroll through the galleries in town that mostly feature newer work by contemporary artists.
And there are also newer galleries to continue the legacy of Provincetown’s art scene. Scott Douglas occupies the space where the beloved Hutson Gallery once was and shows Douglas’ intriguing ceramic sculptures of creatures that are simultaneously familiar and inventively obscure. Just above this gallery, Michael Marrinan returns to Provincetown with his paintings on copper and linen and sculptures made from recycled materials in his eponymous gallery. An interesting thing about Marrinan’s work is the attention paid to his oil and copper paintings’ recycled-wood frames, which he signs, as the complete artwork consists of both the painting and its frame. Just across the street from these two galleries is another one, Cad Red Gallery, where Eastham artist and former Center for Coastal Studies intern Janet Biondi will present her paintings of marine mammals and seascapes in a solo show, Encompassing Sea and Sky (June 25 – July 2).
And there is the more centrally located 346 Gallery, which just recently took over the space where Woodman Shimko Gallery was, and continues to show new work by many of Woody’s artists, including Cassandra Complex, T.J. Walton, Wayne Briggs, and many others.
Variety is the Spice of Life
But Provincetown galleries cannot and should not be pigeonholed and many strike a fine balance between having a specific focus and including a range of approaches that fit the gallery’s identity. In many cases, this range can be seen most easily in group shows, which are common across most of the galleries in town. The Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC) has lately presented a single show for the summer season, often featuring former FAWC fellows and other artists connected to the venerable institutions artistic heritage. This season Coady Brown has curated a selection of works entitled To Move a Mountain that opened in early June and runs through August 22 before it moves to its Armory Show in New York in September. The small show features contemporary artists’ work in relation to nature.
Contemporary and conceptual art are the focus of Art Love Gallery, but that can mean many different things. The Gallery features the street art inspired work of Tali Lopez nearly all season (through August 30). Lopez layers text and images, painting and drawing, often on wood panels to create expressive pieces that seem to reflect a Jean-Michel Basquiat influence on this self-taught artist.
Bowersock Gallery is another frequent host of group exhibitions, often curated along the lines of a theme, such as The Magnificent Wonder Room Museum (July 18 – August 5), inspired by 19th and early 20th century natural history and cabinets of curiosity. Works by painters Paul Beckingham, Brittany Haynes, and Carol Ann Morley will appear alongside those of sculptor Anthony Alemany, and others. It should be a fun show.
Also in town, at Gallery 444, a pop-up exhibition space that hosts a wide range of artists, the Clark Gallery, a Lincoln, Massachusetts based gallery will mount a show of works by its artists whose works span a range of styles and mediums. And just outside of town, Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill is currently featuring a show of works by members of the gallery/school and will also host a juried show: Where Do We Go from Here? (July 22 – August 1) before moving on to a solo show for Cynthia Packard, whose large-scale oil paintings are simply stunning.
Celebrating Humanity
Perhaps the best way to explain art is that it is a reflection of the human experience; it describes through creative means the experience of being alive, with everything that means. While there have been elephants who paint and whales and birds make music, for sure, art as we know it is truly an expression of our humanity. And so, artwork that features other human beings, whether through portraiture, figure studies, or more narrative scenes, can connect us to one another, just as the landscapes and seascapes connect us to nature.
June 25 – July 7, three artists exhibit shows of their work at The Commons, Provincetown’s creative community center. Neil Korpinen gives us three sets of paintings of male figures in various settings, from the beach, in the home, and at the pool in The Summer of ‘24 – Figures and Places; Celeste Hanlon presents drawings, collages, and paintings in her graphic style in Bathing Beauties, Beauty Products, & Carnies; and Matthew Hines, a studio artist at The Commons joins the somewhat nostalgic set of shows with his collection of collages, in a self-titled show.
Stewart Clifford Gallery offers a show of works by Christopher Roddick depicting a number of fun beach scenes (June 20 – July 1); over at Larkin Gallery, artist Lisa Molyneux continues this thread with lighter, body-positive depictions of bears in various poses (July 11 – 16); and at Rice Polak Gallery, artist Pamela Murphy presents a series of nostalgic images of women together in beach scenes taken from real photographs of the early 20th century. These images celebrate connections between women with a lightness that is refreshing. Her work is presented in a group show with Christie Scheele and Willie Little, August 14 – 27.
At Greg Salvatori Gallery, where there are several shows featuring the human form, Michael Lyons, who often presents people with their backs to us, adds a layer of mystery to his paintings of Provincetown scenes, will be featured August 22 – 28. And Patti Mollica continues to show her works, including bar scenes that each tell a human story in a single image, at Simie Maryles Gallery in their new location in the former Wired Puppy space.
Gallery List
For complete, up-to-date schedules and opening reception information, as well as special events, please consult these websites for the places mentioned in this feature, listed here in alphabetical order:
346 Gallery 346 Commercial St.
Alden Gallery 423 Commercial St aldengallery.com
Art Love Gallery 445 Commercial St studiojackie.com
Bakker Gallery 359 Commercial St bakkerproject.com
Berta Walker Gallery 208 Bradford St bertawalkergallery.com
Bowersock Gallery 371 Commercial St bowersockgallery.com
Cad Red Gallery 437 Commercial St.
The Commons 46 Bradford St commonsptown.org
Dozen Gallery 142 Commercial St. dozenstudiogallery.com
Egeli Gallery 382 Commercial St. egeligallery.com
Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC) 24 Pearl St. fawc.org
Four Eleven Gallery 411 Commercial St. fourelevengallery.com
Frederick Studios 237 Commercial St frederickstudioprovincetown.com
Galeria Cubana 357 Commercial St lagaleriacubana.com
Gallery 444 444 Commercial St gallery444ptown.com
Gary Marotta Fine Art 162 Commercial St garymarottafineart.com
Greg Salvatori Gallery 366 Commercial St gregsalvatori.com
Julie Heller Galleries 465 Commercial St./2 Gosnold St juliehellergallery.com
Larkin Gallery 405 Commercial St larkingallery.com
Marrinan Gallery 432 Commercial St. (upstairs) marrinangallery.com
On Center Gallery 352 Commercial St oncentergallery.com
Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM) 460 Commercial St paam.org
Rice Polak Gallery 430 Commercial St ricepolakgallery.com
Schoolhouse Gallery 494 Commercial St galleryschoolhouse.com
Scott Douglas Gallery 432 Commercial St. (downstairs)
Simie Maryles Gallery 379 Commercial St simiemaryles.com
Stewart Clifford Gallery 338 Commercial St stewartcliffordgallery.com
Studio Lacombe 237 Commercial St studiolacombe.com
Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill 10 Meetinghouse Rd., Truro castlehill.org
