OPENING RECEPTION AUGUST 21, 2026 5-9 PM
As 931 Gallery sails into its last month long show before closing owner artist Denise Demby and Michael Wray coincidentally explore a question of ends and new beginnings.
In his series “What Remains” Michael L. C. Wray approaches abstract paintings that began with observations of wildfire landscapes but evolved into a broader exploration of memory, transformation, and what endures. Built through layering, erasure, and reconstruction, the paintings consider what persists after disruption, not as documentation of catastrophe, but as evidence of continual change.
Concurrently, in her ongoing series “Fields at the Edge 2024-present” award winning artist Denise Demby exhibits her fitting subseries of larger scale dark acrylic paintings called “Nocturne”. It is a homage to Whistler ‘s Nocturnes and journey into the low notes of visual language. Coincidentally paralleling the final journey for 931, the paintings signify many things.
For Demby, surface is as important as image and the process is as symbolic. Beginning with bright colors and gesture applied seemingly without direction, sometimes splashed, sprayed and dripped on, Demby reduces the palette down to dark hues creating subtle variations of surface, asking the viewer to slow down and take a closer look. The end is a composition with many layers of movement subordinated in the deep notes of luminous dark purples, reds and blues, where initial expression comes through and the surface is a reminder that even in the end “everything matters”
