Nothing is as it was, 2025 | Barbara Brady | Oil on canvas
On View Sept. 12 – Oct. 20, 2025
Opening Reception | Friday, Sept. 12 | 6:00p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Artist Talk | Wednesday, Oct. 15 | 6:00 p.m. – 8:00p.m.
Featured Artists: Barbara Brady, Mike John Murray, Teresa Shields, Lisa Kelley
ARTISTS
Barbara Brady – Marking Time
Tile Gallery
Barbara Brady creates expressionist paintings, drawing inspiration from her environment, world events, and personal experiences. Through expressive brushwork and bold color, Brady not only creates little worlds within larger spaces, but also captures glimpses of inexplicable moments within her work. Her paintings act as a visceral response to life and the world.
Brady lives and works on the coast of Maine. She received her BFA from Rosemont College and completed her post-graduate study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, PA. After a 30 year career working as an art director and graphic designer for publishing and healthcare organizations on both coasts, it wasn’t until moving to coastal Maine in 2001 that painting became her passion. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions within galleries, museums and cultural centers, and her work is held in corporate and private collections internationally.
Barbara Brady’s Marking Time is on view in our Tile Gallery.
Mike John Murray – Happily Imperfect Together
Book Room Gallery
Interdisciplinary artist, Mike John Murray, crafts objects that are intricate, unusual, yet whimsical. This is evident in how he plays with materiality and form, combining rough and smooth textures, stark colors, and recognizable and unrecognizable motifs. Murray’s work feels unreal and almost dream-like in how they are structured, leaving the viewer yearning for context. He acknowledges this ambiguity, noting “[my work] lingers at the edge of a more primal experience, quietly resisting the impulse to explain themselves.”
Mike John Murray was born in Vermont, and exposed to the Hudson River School of painters early in his youth, sparking interest in art. Murray received his formal arts education at a small university in rural Pennsylvania, and spent his time post-school traveling and learning from artists and craftspeople from across the Americas and Europe, influencing his studio work.
Mike John Murray’s Happily Imperfect Together is on display in our Book Room Gallery.
Teresa Shields, I Feel Seen
Kellner Gallery
Teresa Shields weaves her fascination with fabric, thread, and wool fiber into a unique and colorful artistic journey. Her work invites viewers into the intricate world of embroidery and wet-felting, where she skillfully interprets abstract shapes and unravels new dimensions in materiality. Drawing inspiration from nature’s intricate designs–plant forms, human eyes, and cell structure–and the female gaze, Shields’s exhibition presents her unique perspective on women’s experience. Her sculptural eyeballs follow and see the audience in a way that allows them to be observed while actively returning attention. The sculptural necklaces connect her process to the earliest adornment of human bodies and the manner in which women use external objects of beauty to create meaning.
Teresa Shields is an artist based in Jenkintown, PA. She earned her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and her MFA from Mass College of Art. Known for her idiosyncratic work that beckons tactile engagement, Shields has exhibited across the country, accumulating over 20 awards and collections by eight institutions.
Teresa Shields’s I Feel Seen is being exhibited in our Kellner Gallery.
Lisa Kelley, Respite
Community Arts Gallery
Lisa Kelley is a trauma-certified artist and advocate who is committed to building community through art-making. Inspired by the urban landscape she grew up in, as well as the fields and forests she takes respite in, Kelley sees the beauty “in decay, in rusted steel, in golden fields, in wings in flight, in the squeal of sirens, the rumble of the el, the rustle of the trees, the song of the birds.” Her artwork serves as a call to action, helping bring awareness to those struggling with addiction and giving them a voice through collaborative artwork.
Lisa Kelley earned her BFA from Moore College of Art and Design and is a teaching artist at Prevention Point and Philly Home, organizations that serve people with substance use disorder and homelessness in the Kensington and Fairmount neighborhoods of Philadelphia.
Kelley recently completed her 2 year artist residency at Abington Art Center’s Little Meetinghouse. Throughout her residency, she not only hosted free, monthly community art-making events, but also created a new body of work informed by the connections she has made as an artist in residence and continued connections with those in Kensington.
Lisa Kelley’s Respite is on view in our Community Arts Gallery.
For inquiries about work in our exhibition, please contact our Gallery Manager at acook@abingtonartcenter.org.