Viridian Artists is pleased to present BEYOND ALL MEASURE, an affiliate group exhibition showcasing a compelling selection of extraordinary works by JOSHUA GREENBERG, ROSEMARY K. LYONS, MICHAEL RECK, KATHLEEN SHANAHAN, DOROTHY SHAW, SHEILA SMITH, and LARS WESTBY. The exhibition will be on view from March 31 through April 18, 2026. An Opening Reception will take place on Thursday, April 2, 2026, from 6 to 8 PM, followed by a Closing Reception on Saturday, April 18, from 4 to 6 PM.

BEYOND ALL MEASURE brings together selected works by seven gallery artists, each reflecting the idea of art for art’s sake. These artists are driven to create and experiment, using their practices to explore autonomy, identity, and self-expression. For them, art is a vital force and a powerful stimulus to life.

Although their styles vary widely, from abstract to representational, they share a strong commitment to process, form, and color. The exhibition includes Joshua Greenberg’s digitally reimagined nature-based photographs, Rosemary K. Lyons’s gilded panels, Michael Reck’s hand-cut ornate foam glyphs, Kathleen Shanahan’s playful layered compositions, Dorothy Shaw’s nuanced landscapes, Sheila Smith’s moody digitally enhanced photographs, and Lars Westby’s color-drenched high-relief paintings. Working across paint, photography, and mixed media, these artists invite viewers to engage with both the visual and conceptual possibilities of contemporary art.

JOSHUA GREENBERG’s The Secret Life of Leaves explores themes of nature, fluidity, and abstraction. The series focuses on translating various forms of nature into new, abstract visual compositions. The series is both a record of a captured moment and a new, re-envisioned visual work created in digital space. The series illustrates how photo-based imagery may be used to create abstract art. Pursuing less explored dimensions of photography may contribute to enhanced expressive and conceptual possibilities.

ROSEMARY K. LYONS’s series Food for Thoughtuses fruits and vegetables as a jumping point for exploring shape and color. Drawing on medieval panel painting, altarpieces, and illuminated manuscripts, Lyons works with traditional techniques, using egg tempera and gilding each panel with 23 karat gold on board. With a witty sensibility, she incorporates the words “food” or “thought” into each composition. When presented together, the panels repeat these phrases, creating a layered play on language that suggests both literal and figurative meaning.

MICHAEL RECK’s abstract compositions are constructed from carefully hand-cut foamcore mounted on a wood panel. The forms are layered with gesso to soften their edges and bring a sense of cohesion to the surface. Paint is applied across both the forms and the background, emphasizing their intricacy and their relationship to color. Together, these elements function as glyphs, which the artist conceives as part of an invented, unknown language.

KATHLEEN SHANAHAN is an image maker and figurative artist whose work often moves toward abstraction. Her process begins with a visual puzzle of her own making, which she develops by working through a range of possibilities, revising and adjusting as the composition takes shape. The large-scale painting on fabric, Beach-combing Saltimbanques, began as a response to four large leaf shapes that were pre-existing on the surface and later obscured. From this starting point, the composition expands to include caricatures of family members and pets alongside dancers who frolic together like circus acrobats. The result is a layered and open-ended work in which meaning is left for the viewer to complete.

Inspired by the ambiguity of nature, DOROTHY SHAW explores moments where the natural and the personal intermingle. Her paintings occupy a space between representation and abstraction, rooted in the tradition of landscape painting. She works within uncertain spaces where forms emerge from shadow, using partially obscured elements to guide the development of both composition and form. A tree branch, for example, may dissolve into the sky only to reappear, reflecting her fascination with infinite spatial possibilities and overlapping perspectives within the two-dimensional canvas. In this exhibition, Shaw presents compositions in which observation and interpretation unfold organically.

SHEILA SMITH has long been fascinated by photography, a passion that began at age 13 with her first camera, a Brownie box. Although painting remained a constant part of her creative practice, in 1997, she devoted herself full time to photography, and in time moving from film to digital and capturing a wide range of subjects throughout the streets of New York City. For Smith, taking the photograph is just the first step. The image is then transferred to her computer, her modern darkroom, where she applies her design skills in Photoshop to bring the work fully to life. The finished pieces are mounted on canvas or board, completing her process.

As a ceramic sculptor for many years, LARS WESTBY has brought his deep understanding of materiality to painting, as seen in the High Relief Paintings featured in this exhibition. These works are defined by high-relief “frozen drips” that protrude from the surface like a flurry of thin stalactites, creating highly textured, vibrantly colored surfaces that emphasize paint as both medium and subject. Westby describes their effect as a “three-dimensional pixelated/pointillistic” surface. While abstract, faint images emerge through the layered paint, introducing an element of the unknown and situating the work between what exists and what is imagined. The paintings are about “seeing” paint itself and discovering what it reveals in its tangled, unruly mass.

Presented at Viridian Artists | 548 West 28th St. #632  NY, NY 10001