Current Exhibitions
Gallery I
September 8 – October 3, 2026
Elizabeth Downer Riker
The Understory
Reception: Thu, Sept 10, 6-8 PM
Closing Reception: Sat, Oct 3, 4-6 PM
| Ceres Gallery is pleased to present THE UNDERSTORY, an exhibition of paintings and sculptures by Elizabeth Downer Riker. The Understory features large oil paintings that blend personal narratives with fantastical elements, together with smaller realistic works painted on ragged-edge linen portraying historical events, and sculptures that draw on everyday tools that women use around the world. Depicting both realistic and surreal images of women in nature, Downer Riker challenges us to contemplate how violence affects our families, our society and our planet through the accelerating exploitation of both people and the Earth. Downer Riker focuses on the way in which women have protected and defended nature over the centuries, putting their bodies on the line at great risk. “In both Western and non-Western cultures, nature was traditionally seen as feminine and as a living organism,” Downer Riker said. “In our modern consumer society, nature is viewed as something to be dominated and used for its parts. This mentality has led to the climate emergency we are now experiencing. Today, in communities around the world, women continue to defend the rivers, the forests and the land, and are met with brutality and persecution.” With The Understory, Downer Riker hopes to spark a broader conversation about this crisis. Elizabeth Downer Riker, born in Boston and raised in Paris, started out as a filmmaker, earning her MFA at NYU’s graduate film program. After discovering her love for painting, she studied at the Art Students League in Manhattan. For many years she lived in Oaxaca, Mexico where she painted people working the land. On her return to New York in 2011, she began a series of paintings of rooftop farms and community gardens to celebrate the greening of cities. Downer Riker has exhibitied her work in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. She is an artist member of the Salmagundi Club. elizabethdownerriker.com |
Gallery II
September 8 – October 3, 2026
Jane Seavers
Visions of a World on Fire
Opening Reception: Thu, Sept 10, 6-8 PM
Closing Reception: Sat, Oct 3, 4-6 PM
| Ceres Gallery is pleased to present VISIONS OF A WORLD ON FIRE, a compelling new exhibition by oil painter, Jane Seavers. Following her 2023 exhibition, Refuge and Peril in the Borderlands, Seavers shifted her focus to a landscape transformed by wildfire, smoke, and environmental change. Working in a style that blends realism and abstraction, she explores the visceral tension between beauty and danger, inviting viewers to contemplate humanity’s relationship with a natural world increasingly at risk. For Seavers, these landscapes are not distant observations, but lived realities. Her perspective is informed by her personal experience with repeated evacuation of her home, as well as her close ties to the firefighting community–including her son, a firefighter/paramedic, and her neighbor, an elite wildland “Hotshot” firefighter. Through luminous color and dramatic atmosphere, the exhibition offers a tribute to both the majesty of the land and the resilience of those who protect it. “I want my work to serve as a witness to the fragility of our environment and the bravery of those who fight to protect our essential and natural world”, says Seavers. “I want to balance the aesthetic beauty of the landscape with the urgent, often painful realities of its degradation.” Jane Seavers lives and works in Southwestern New Mexico where she has painted the landscapes of the borderlands and Southwest for nearly two decades. Raised on a multi-generational farm in Wisconsin, she came to painting after a career as a nurse-midwife and nurse practitioner serving communities in California, Alaska, Guatemala, and New Mexico. This background, rooted in a life of service, informs lifelong interest in the intersection between people and place. Seavers’ work may be found in private collections throughout New Mexico, Colorado, New York, and California. |
| Ceres Gallery is a feminist, not-for-profit, alternative gallery space, founded in 1984 as a program of the New York Feminist Art Institute (NYFAI). Its mission is to promote contemporary women in the arts by providing exhibition space that raises public awareness and addresses the limited access women have had to commercial art galleries and to the public conversation that develops from that access. gallery hours, Tue – Sat 12-6 PM |
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
October 6 – 31, 2026
Rae Broyles
Judith Greenwald