Smoke Signals in Sunlight - Susan English and Laura Moriarty
10 Jan - 15 Feb 2026
Kenise Barnes Fine Art is pleased to announce Smoke Signals in Sunlight, a two person exhibition featuring new work by Hudson Valley–based artists Susan English and Laura Moriarty. The exhibition brings together two artists whose practices are deeply rooted in material exploration, natural processes, and the poetics of landscape—each approaching abstraction through distinct yet resonant vocabularies.
Susan English is a contemporary painter known for her sophisticated explorations of color, light, and surface. Using a unique process of pouring tinted polymer onto aluminum panels, she manipulates the flow and settling of the material to create surfaces that range from matte to high gloss. The resulting works—minimalist yet richly nuanced—capture the interplay of intention, chance, and natural phenomena.
English’s work has been reviewed in the New York Times, which described her paintings as “sublime and buoyant”. English has exhibited extensively throughout the United States. She has also been featured in
group exhibitions at institutions such as the Strohl Art Center. Susan English’s paintings have been widely exhibited in galleries and at art fairs. She has been honored with the following awards and residencies: NYSS Mercedes Matter Award, Ucross Foundation Residency, Ucross, Wyoming, Saltonstall Foundation Fellow, Ithaca, NY, HFA Artists Residency, Garrison, New York. English has been featured in White Hot Magazine and The Philadelphia Inquirer, to name a few. She earned an MFA from Hunter College and a BA from Hamilton College. The artist lives and works in New York.
Smoke Signals in Sunlight highlights Moriarty’s encaustic monoprints and sculpture and English’s poured polymer paintings. Both artists engage with time, transformation, and the physical forces that shape the natural world. Their works—layered, atmospheric, and quietly powerful—invite viewers to consider the subtle signals and shifting terrains that define our environment.
Laura Moriarty creates process driven sculptures and encaustic monoprints that echo geological formation. Working primarily with pigmented beeswax, she builds strata through heating, cooling, erosion, and compression—methods that parallel the earth’s own shaping forces. Her work balances scientific representation with abstraction, resulting in visual records of imagined subterranean landscapes.
Moriarty’s work has been exhibited internationally and has been supported by numerous prestigious awards, including grants from the Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation and the Pollock Krasner Foundation. She participated in notable residencies such as the Baer Art Center in Iceland and the Rabbit Island Artist Residency in Lake Superior, The Cill Rialaig Project, Ballinskelligs, County Kerry, Ireland. Her solo exhibition Resurfacing was featured at the Hunterdon Art Museum in 2021. Her work was showcased in site responsive installations, including a 2022 project at the Albany International Airport and participation in the AHA! A House for Arts program on WMHT public television.
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