Gross McCleaf Gallery

Today! Join us from 1–4 pm for the Opening Reception of Celia Reisman: Street Views and Common Ground, curated by Celia Reisman. 🌿

Come see both exhibitions in person, meet the artists, and spend the afternoon with us at the gallery.

Street Views brings together Reisman’s recent paintings of familiar places transformed through color, shifting perspective, and close observation. In the adjoining gallery, Common Ground brings Reisman into conversation with Claudia Rilling, Lou Schellenberg, Laura Vahlberg, and Sophie C. White, exploring the many ways a sense of place can be observed and reimagined through each artist’s hand.

Opening Reception
Saturday, September 19, 1–4 pm

Gross McCleaf Gallery
123 Leverington Ave, Philadelphia
Parking is available in The Mill Studios lot

The exhibitions continue through October 17.

Gross McCleaf Gallery Celia Reisman Landscape Paintings: Maine, Nova Scotia, Pennsylvania Claudia Rilling Sophie WhiClaudia RillingrSophie WhiteLaura Vahlberg

Now open: Common Ground, curated by Celia Reisman

A first look inside the exhibition, featuring paintings by Claudia Rilling, Lou Schellenberg, Laura Vahlberg, and Sophie C. White.

Common Ground, Curated by Celia Reisman
September 18 – October 17, 2026

Join us tomorrow for the Opening Reception, Saturday, September 19, from 1–4 PM, celebrating Common Ground alongside Reisman’s concurrent solo exhibition, Street Views.

We look forward to welcoming you to the gallery this weekend!

Preview the exhibitions and available works at grossmccleaf.com.

Sophie White Landscape Paintings: Maine, Nova Scotia, Pennsylvania Claudia Rilling Laura VahlClaudia RillingmLaura VahlbergaCelia ReismanGross McCleaf Gallery

A first look inside Celia Reisman: Street Views, opening this Friday, September 18.

On the walls, “Main Street Green” and “Main Street Blue”, two 40 x 50 inch oil paintings featured in the exhibition.

Celia Reisman: Street Views
September 18 – October 17, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 19, 1–4 PM

We look forward to welcoming you to the gallery this weekend!

Preview the exhibition and available works at grossmccleaf.com.

Celia Reisman Gross McCleaf Gallery

One week until Common Ground.

Laura Vahlberg,
“Hotel”
Oil on linen on board
11” x 15”

On view in Common Ground, curated by Celia Reisman, opening September 18.

Featuring Claudia Rilling, Lou Schellenberg, Laura Vahlberg, and Sophie C. White

September 18 – October 17
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 19, 1–4 PM

Preview the exhibition and available works at grossmccleaf.com.

Laura Vahlberg Celia Reisman Gross McCleaf Gallery

A closer look at Celia Reisman’s “Approaching Rain”.

In conversation with writer Elizabeth Johnson, Celia Reisman reflects on the skies in several of her recent paintings and the role they play within her compositions. “Approaching Rain”, a 24-inch square painting based on a gouache drawing made on-site, began with the color of the sky.

“The sky takes up almost half of the canvas, modulates from dark to light and reinforces the color field.” Reisman notes, “With current work, larger areas of sky and foreground allow me to add new elements.”

Celia Reisman
“Approaching Rain”
Oil on canvas
24 x 24 inches

On view in Celia Reisman: Street Views, opening September 18.

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 19, 1–4 PM

Preview the exhibition and available works at grossmccleaf.com.

Celia Reisman Gross McCleaf Gallery

Meet the Artists of Common Ground: Lou Schellenberg + Claudia Rilling

As we continue introducing the artists of Common Ground, we’re taking a closer look at Lou Schellenberg and Claudia Rilling, whose paintings explore architecture and landscape through distinct approaches to observation and composition.

For more than thirty years, Lou Schellenberg has painted the land, buildings, and familiar places around her, many of which she has known for decades. Dividing her year between Pennsylvania and Nova Scotia, Schellenberg works from observation in oils and watercolors, often creating several versions of a place in a single session. Painting gesturally and spontaneously, she seeks to capture what she describes as the “feeling of being in a space,” balancing descriptive observation with an enduring interest in the abstract arrangement of shape and color.

Claudia Rilling is drawn to the interplay between architectural structures and the organic forms of the surrounding landscape. She uses the strong horizontals, verticals, and rectangles of buildings to organize the picture plane, emphasizing the underlying geometry and shape within what she observes. Rilling moves fluidly between processes: some paintings are completed in a single sitting, while others are layered and reconsidered over weeks, months, or longer.

Together, their paintings show how familiar landscapes and the structures within them can be observed, reorganized, and reinterpreted through distinctly personal ways of seeing.

___

Common Ground, curated by Celia Reisman, brings together Schellenberg and Rilling alongside Laura Vahlberg and Sophie C. White, presented in conversation with Reisman’s concurrent solo exhibition, Street Views.

Common Ground, Curated by Celia Reisman
September 18 – October 17, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 19, 1–4 PM

Featured:
Slides 1–4: Lou Schellenberg Landscape Paintings: Maine, Nova Scotia, Pennsylvania 
Slides 5–8: Claudia Rilling Claudia Rilling

Preview Claudia Rillingand available works at grossmccleaf.com.

Meet the Artists of Common Ground: Laura Vahlberg + Sophie C. White

As we look ahead to Common Ground, we’re taking a closer look at Laura Vahlberg and Sophie C. White, whose paintings begin with direct observation of the environments around them.

Working en plein air, Laura Vahlberg looks for what she describes as “order amid the visual overload of everyday life.” Faced with countless details, she distills the landscape into interlocking shapes, guided by three central pillars: color, composition, and feeling. Vahlberg considers the “emotional residue” that remains after a viewer steps away from the work, seeking a sense of calm and order through a reverent simplicity of color and form.

Sophie C. White has spent more than twenty years making small, representational paintings from life of familiar places at various stages of becoming unfamiliar. Her recent gouaches respond to the rapid transformation of her Fishtown/Kensington neighborhood, allowing her to spend time with places as they change and, in some cases, disappear. Painted on site using only her natural vision as a guide, each work records a particular place at a particular moment, becoming, as White describes it, “sort of an artifact of that moment as experienced by me.”

Together, their paintings speak to a central idea within Common Ground: how differently we can experience, interpret, and relate to the places around us.

___

Common Ground, curated by Celia Reisman, brings together Vahlberg and White alongside Claudia Rilling and Lou Schellenberg, presented in conversation with Reisman’s concurrent solo exhibition, Street Views.

Common Ground, Curated by Celia Reisman
September 18 – October 17, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 19, 1–4 PM

Featured:
Slides 1–4: Laura Vahlberg Laura Vahlberg 
Slides 5–7: Sophie C. White Sophie White

Preview the exhibition and available works at grossmccleaf.com.

Celia Reisman Gross McCleaf Gallery Claudia Rilling Landscape Paintings: Maine, Nova Scotia, Pennsylvania

Inside the studio with Celia Reisman:

Ahead of her upcoming solo exhibition, Street Views, we visited Reisman in her studio, where paintings in progress share space with gouache drawings and source material.

Reisman begins with places encountered firsthand, often stopping when an unexpected color, quality of light, architectural detail, or other “quirky something” catches her attention. From there, shapes shift, buildings move, plants are rearranged, and color and perspective change as the paintings develop.

“I control the process in the beginning, then instinct adds more color and detail to describe place.” - Celia Reisman

That balance between observation and invention runs throughout Street Views. As Reisman describes it, “If I took you to the locations, you would see all the elements but with a twist: scale change, perspective distortion, rearrangement of light and shadow, and everything recomposed.”

And even within that process, Reisman leaves room for surprise: “My tendency is to add, which can disrupt, but I like adding something that feels out of context.”

Reisman lives and works between Merion, Pennsylvania and Strafford, Vermont. She received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and MFA from Yale University, and has exhibited widely throughout the United States. Her work has been recognized with a Purchase Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Survey Exhibition at the Michener Art Museum.

Celia Reisman: Street Views
September 18 – October 17, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 19, 1–4 PM

To learn more, visit grossmccleaf.com or contact the gallery at [email protected].

Celia Reisman Gross McCleaf Gallery

Who’s looking forward to fall? 🍂

A selection of small-scale landscapes by Ann Lofquist, reflecting the changing seasons across Massachusetts and Vermont.

Painted from direct observation, these plein air works capture Lofquist’s immediate response to the landscape, from changing foliage and winding streams to rural roads and architecture.

Featured:
1. Ann Lofquist, “October Oaks (MA),” Oil on panel, 8.5” x 17”
2. Ann Lofquist, “Dublin (VT),” Oil on panel, 6” x 17.5”
3. Ann Lofquist, “Round Barn (Sharon, VT),” Oil on panel, 6.75” x 18”
4. Ann Lofquist, “Bray Road III (MA),” Oil on panel, 7.5” x 17”

Gross McCleaf Gallery is open by appointment throughout August. To learn more about available works by Ann Lofquist, visit grossmccleaf.com or contact the gallery at [email protected].