Interviews by Brainard Carey

Splat Daisies, is a solo exhibition of dreamlike paintings and sculpture by Sarah Alice Moran. Splat is a cartoon word and the spaces in these paintings draw on that system of suspended rationale. By loosening the rules of scale, gravity, and time, Moran creates dreamy pastoral scenes where humans, animals, and nature coexist without hierarchy. The show explores the quiet, almost mystical bonds between humans and animals, and the ways they shape our emotional lives.

Moran paints wet-on-wet, letting thin washes of color blend and bleed across the canvas. Sunflowers dissolve into daisies, shadows become shapes, and light seemingly glows from the flowers themselves. Her compositions balance the elastic logic of cartoons with a sophisticated command of color and atmosphere. Figures, rainbows, and blossoms appear in different configurations while animals move through these spaces less as narrative agents but  as symbolic or devotional presences.

Among them, inevitably, is the artist’s dog Pepper. Pepper died early in the making of this series, and her prolonged illness ushered in an extended period of anticipatory grief. During this time, Moran found solace in researching ancient Roman dog epitaphs—concise, tender monuments that affirmed the endurance of this bond across millennia.

The result is a body of work that is a meditation on companionship, loss, and remembrance—a garden for Pepper to inhabit and for the artist herself to heal within. Two large-scale column paintings, inspired by the artist’s research on ancient Rome, create an architectural space – a temple – for the sculptures to operate as a shrine, and visitors are encouraged to bring their dogs; milk bones will be provided.

Sarah Alice Moran, Bodega Flower Dream, 2025, Acrylic on canvas, 11 x 14 inches
Sarah Alice Moran, Good Night P, 2026, Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 inches
Sarah Alice Moran, Sun (Flower) Bather, 2026, Acrylic on canvas, 11 x 14 inches

De Mont’s practice emerges from her work as an intuitive guide, leading immersive experiences in which participants are invited into states of openness and release. It was within these rituals that she began making photographs — images conceived not as portraits but as reflections, offering back to each subject a picture of themselves liberated from the hierarchies of identity and status. The camera, in De Mont’s hands, becomes a kind of witness to what she describes as a direct encounter with the divine.

What results is a body of work of striking formal beauty and genuine spiritual weight. A figure floats in a glacial pool, arms wide, body small against the massive indifference of boulders and jade-green water — surrendered, but also luminous. A woman lies curled on a sand dune at dusk, the full moon burning above her in a wide blue sky, the curve of her back answering the curve of the earth. Throughout, De Mont is drawn to moments when the border between the human figure and its surroundings seems to dissolve — not in romantic idealization, but in something closer to fact.

De Mont is particularly drawn to the feminine as a site of intuition and receptivity, and she often photographs two or three figures together, finding in that small gathering an amplification of communion — bodies acting as extensions of each other and of the earth itself. “We are incredibly sophisticated energy beings, I hope to capture a transmission that is contagious, that makes our bellies soften with peace and belonging.” It is a quality her pictures genuinely carry. They ask something of the viewer — a willingness to be still, to look, to feel the pull of a life that is waiting.

Stella De Mont is based in Los Angeles. This Life Wants You is her first solo exhibition with Benrubi Gallery.

Stella De Mont, Owls, 2024
Stella De Mont, Glory, 2024
Stella De Mont, Cradled, 2025

Michalik has exhibited internationally in art institutions, fairs, university galleries, community spaces, and commercial galleries the current show of this interview at Kathryn Markel.

Her paintings have been published internationally in Architectural Digest, Michalik’s newspaper,  “Devour,” was published in collaboration with Brooklyn based Raw Meat Collective, and was recently acquired by the Museum of Modern Art Library in New York. It was displayed in the exhibit, “Please Knock: A Teen Album of Art” at MoMA through October 1st, 2023. Her painting “I Feel with my Eyes,” is in the permanent collection of WAG-Qaumajuq and is currently on view in the exhibition “Backyard Florilegium” through March 31, 2025. 

Michalik lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Tess Michalik, Possession, 2026 oil on canvas 48 x 40 in.
Tess Michalik, Could Heaven Ever Be Like This, 2025 oil on canvas 45 x 32 in.
Tess Michalik, Love Crimes, 2025 oil on panel 30 x 24 in.

David Smalling portrait © Stefen Pompee
Born in 1987 in Kingston, Jamaica, David Smalling lives and works in New York City. He studied Mathematics at Yale University, where he also trained at the Yale School of Art, and holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Drawing from the tradition of Mannerism and the Dutch Golden Age, Smalling’s paintings examine how contemporary social codes and gender norms shape identity and behavior. Through carefully constructed domestic and ceremonial scenes, he explores themes of belonging, aspiration, and restraint, questioning the roles we inherit and perform.

The exhibition of all new paintings on wood panels takes its title from the Elizabethan collar, the veterinary device colloquially known as the “cone of shame”—a protective apparatus designed to prevent an animal from tearing at its own sutures. The collar, as depicted in Cone of Shame, becomes a metaphor for conditional belonging: entry into a space that promises safety and prestige while quietly limiting autonomy.

David Smalling, Party Favor, 2026 Oil on panel 61 × 91.5 cm — 24 × 36 in. Courtesy of the artist and Templon, Paris – Brussels – New York. Photo © Charles Roussel.
David Smalling, Cremaster, 2025 Oil on panel 51 × 61 cm — 20 × 24 in. Courtesy of the artist and Templon, Paris – Brussels – New York; Photo © Charles Roussel.
David Smalling, Follicular, 2025 Oil on panel 91 × 61 cm — 36 × 24 in. Courtesy of the artist and Templon, Paris – Brussels – New York. Photo © Charles Roussel.

Catherine Birk (b. 1994, she/her) is an artist and researcher currently based in Chicago, IL.

Her interdisciplinary practice brings transgender studies, queer theory, and critical theory into the expanded field of painting. Catherine earned her MFA in Painting at the University of Wisconsin – Madison (2024), and BAs in Studio Art and Art History from the College of Charleston (2016). Solo exhibitions include My mother is a horse., at the Chazen Museum of Art (Madison, WI).

She has exhibited in group shows nationally, including at Redux Contemporary Art Center (Charleston, SC), Trout Museum of Art (Appleton, WI), Arts + Literature Laboratory (Madison, WI), Real Tinsel (Milwaukee, WI), and D. D. D. D. (New York, NY).

Catherine Birk | hut (interference), 2025 Oil, acrylic, cold wax medium and netting on canvas 13 x 15.5 inches
Catherine Birk | dam (for Morandi), 2025 Oil, acrylic, cold wax medium, and Dragon Skin Silicone on panel with artist’s frame 17 x 21 inches
Catherine Birk | hut (for Strega Nona), 2026
27 cast beeswax slabs; dried herbs and essential oils of rosemary, thyme, basil, sage, and
oregano; cast urethane rubber; bolts
Dimensions variable: 11 x 14 inches each