solo show – Art Spiel

October 13, 2025October 7, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

Frances Smokowski at Cavin-Morris Gallery

In Dialogue

Installation view, Cavin-Morris Gallery, photo courtesy the artist

In 2017, during post-concussion recovery and before considering any public audience, Frances Smokowski began drawing as part of her wellness routines. She knew even then that the work could one day be useful and inspiring to others, and she never felt it existed only for her. Pandemic-era synchronicities later led to gallery representation, confirming that this is the moment for her bio-glyphics and energy-scapes to come forward.

May 4, 2022May 4, 2022, by Etty Yaniv

Natalie Westbrook: Faces at Zynka

Previewing

A picture containing text, indoor, floor, painting

Description automatically generated

Natalie Westbrook’s exhibition at ZYNKA Gallery in Pittsburgh features new paintings on canvas and drawings on paper. Westbrook depicts faces as thick lines immersed in saturated hot pinks, greens or monochrome gradations—altogether fluctuating between the monstrous and the angelic, the scary and the pathetic. Sometimes they are solitary and sometimes they indicate twins or perhaps a fragmented self. In her catalogue essay on Natalie Westbrook’s work, Larissa Pham observes that Faces “come for you, leering, grinning, mouths a garish lipsticked rictus of joy, embedded flat against the canvas, their features seeming to emerge from the psychological fabric of the painting itself.”

May 5, 2020April 20, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Artists on Coping: Gail Winbury

During the coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

**Gail Winbury in her studio, photo by** Nancy Ori

Gail Winbury brings a psychological lens to her art. She shows in museums, universities and galleries in the States, Europe and Mexico. Her work was in OTAContemporary in Santa Fe, Aferro Gallery in Newark, St Peters University in Jersey City, NJ, The Jersey City Museum, the Monmouth Museum of Art and the Henrich Heine Haus in Germany and other venues. She was a resident at the School of Visual Arts, Manhattan, and at Edgewood Farms, Truro, Ma., a Fellow with the Bau Foundation in Puglia, Italy, and received a grant for an artist exchange in Israel.