fall is almost here and our september exhibitions are up at the gallery for jill lear + sherrie wolf. from an artists’s standpoint planning for a solo show requires organization and foresight. paintings must be completed in time to allow for shipping and framing especially since our september exhibitions were coming from sun valley, id and portland, or respectively. by the time all the work is ready to be install a marathon has already taken place. we are so grateful to our wonderful artists who are committed to producing a group of work for us to exhibit and share with our collectors. it is a privilege we do not take lightly. we hope everyone enjoys both these gorgeous shows with their meticulous interpretation of nature.

Jill lear

jill lear is a painter whose primary subject and inspiration are trees in the landscape as a means of transcribing not only the experience of being in, and thinking about nature but also the way in which we process the world around us. jill’s large-scale works on paper have been exhibited in san francisco, new york, seattle and austin. her work has been acquired by the permanent collections at one world trade center, ny, wright state university art museum dayton, oh as well as the philip isles collection, ny. jill trained formally at the new york studio school ny, ny and holds degrees from both southern methodist university in dallas, tx as well as the chambre syndicale of haute couture in paris, france. she is currently at work on a series called “urban sprawl: trees in cities”

“it starts with a single tree in the landscape; assigned its latitude and longitude. then the investigation begins. a transcription of not only the experience of being in and thinking about nature, but also about the way in which we process the world around us, literally. from the particular, the place itself: a topographic study involving measurement, proportion, negative space, positive forms. to the general: the idea of the thing rather than the thing itself, territory, light, space, sound.

then, by subtraction, painting the experience of being there, letting only the major lines and colors of the landscape remain until, like the tree, its significance survives. a kind of modern map of an old world. And like maps, the paintings invite investigation into their white spaces by what they suggest and by what they hide.”

— jill lear

sherrie wolf

sherrie wolf was born in portland, oregon in 1952 where she resides and paints today. wolf received a bfa in painting at the museum art school, pacific northwest college of art and went on to study art at the chelsea college of art, london, england earning a ma in printmaking. she uses the classic paintings by old masters as a backdrop for her own still life compositions. sherrie arranges fresh fruit and flowers in the foreground and allows the older paintings to hover behind. "I have always been a still-life painter. my images openly play with the fact that art is artifice. in recent years, i have arranged objects in front of excerpts from old master paintings. earlier in my career, while imitating 19th century american trompe l’oil and 17th century dutch still-life traditions in subject matter and formal elements of composition, i explored contrived or discovered relationships between seemingly unrelated objects. mirrors or other formal objects often reflected the contemporary clutter of my studio. light, shadow and three-dimensional spatial relationships played important roles, and i often used nontraditional perspectives, such as looking straight down on the still life arrangement. a mong the subject matter, there would be an open book or a card portraying an image from a historical painting. in time, these excerpts became more prominent, and eventually i filled the entire background with a quotation from an old master painting. this connected me to a history of reinterpretation and artistic borrowing prevalent among artists. my images have evolved from a love of art history and a desire to present multiple levels of expression to my viewer."

“in my new series, titled “tulips at niagara,” i focus on the natural beauty of the tulips and poppies in my foreground still life, presenting a juxtaposition with the power and force of the natural environment. i choose to play loosely with an interpretation of an idealized memory of the niagara river at the cataract, which references paintings by gustav grunewald from circa 1832. looking back and looking forward presents ideas about how we viewed the world at that time compared to how we see it now, demonstrating that the power and grandeur of nature is always present.

in my smaller paintings, i have explored simplified arrangements of the beautiful tulips that appear in spring and early summer.”

— sherrie wolf 2026

sherrie wolf’s studio on the coast of oregon

group exhibition of new work by gallery artists

all available work by each artist can be viewed on our website under their individual tabs including sizing + pricing. hidell brooks gallery is by appointment. please call the gallery if you have any further questions.