A Backwards Bloom
Stephen Benenson and Michael Berryhill
Opening reception September 4 • Friday 5-8 pm
A Backwards Bloom is an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Stephen Benenson and Michael Berryhill.
Benenson and Berryhill build several layers of mark-making, attempting to further abstract and stretch the familiar. Scraping, wiping, and digging is used to way-find through the nameable and the unknown. Recognizable shapes and narratives are used as a starting point, but the works ultimately nod to process and discovery. Saturated palettes illuminate the surface, asking for closer looking.
Cover image • Left: Stephen Benenson, The Hatter’s Table #2, oil and acrylic on board, 40 x 30 inches, 2025-26 | Right: Michael Berryhill, Gloria. Oil on linen, 20 x 16 in, 2024.
Stephen Benenson is a painter who has lived and worked in Portland, Maine, for the past decade. Stephen received his MFA in Painting from the Yale School of Art in 2014, and maintains a studio at the SPACE Studios building. His practice focuses on experimental application of geometry and color, juxtaposed with references to art history and children’s drawings. He was a co-founder of the artist-run gallery Able Baker Contemporary in Portland.
Michael Berryhill‘s paintings portrays objects that are “figuratively abstract.” For Berryhill, there’s no difference between realism and abstraction. Influenced by the emerging neo-Nabis style, Berryhill creates enigmatic paintings that arise from drawings and allude to subjects, often human or animal figures. His work reminds the viewer of the challenge of capturing the process of painting, and the physical and conceptual layering that a surface might contain.
Michael Berryhill (b. El Paso, TX) lives and works in Ellenville, NY. He received his MFA from Columbia University in 2009. He has exhibited extensively in the U.S., having solo exhibitions at Night Gallery in Los Angeles, CA; Kate Werble in New York, NY, and Derek Eller in New York, NY. Berryhill has been reviewed by John Yau in Hyperallergic, Carrie Moyer in Art in American, in Artforum, and in The Brooklyn Rail, among others. He has also been a participant and a Dean at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.