Clare Grill and Margaux Ogden

Clare Grill and Margaux Ogden both demonstrate a centrality of touch in their carefully worked surfaces. Their paintings, the compositions of which are at once found and constructed, derive power from the evidence of their making.

Grill’s softly layered paintings draw from antique embroidery and domestic textiles, creating abstract compositions that resonate with the textures of memory. Working on linen, she drags paint across the surface to reveal its weave before building delicate veils through cycles of painting, scraping, and wiping. Her forms emerge slowly as if unearthed, inviting viewers into a contemplative, intimate space.

Born out of intuitive decisions — often guided by natural occurrences like daylight or shadow falling across the surface — Grill’s paintings are documents of marks made with brush or fingers and colors added or removed. In essence, they tell the story of the artist’s process and the passage of time.

In contrast, Ogden’s paintings are vivid, architectural, and systematic. Her compositions unfold across the canvas in imperfect mirroring, evoking imagery from both the natural and built world. Subtle shifts in the works encourage viewers to engage more intensively, noticing the variations that animate her iterative, generative approach.

Using diluted acrylic washes, she creates rhythmic, freehand paintings, allowing chance and human touch to disrupt the logic of the grid. Her colors — bold, unusual, often luminous — pulse across the surface with both an optical and emotional charge.

For both Grill and Ogden, the substrate plays a crucial role, formally and compositionally. The surfaces are not arbitrary or static; rather, they serve as a tactile element integral to the final painting. Each artist’s relationship with materiality becomes a means to contemplate broader themes such as time, history, and memory. Despite their distinct techniques and visual results, both engage in a similar pursuit of sustained observation, contemplation, and response.

About the Artists

Clare Grill

Clare Grill (b. 1979, Chicago, Illinois) received a master of fine arts from the Pratt Institute in 2005 and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2011. Recent solo exhibitions include Wich Language and Oyster, M+B, Los Angeles; At the Soft Stages, Derek Eller Gallery, New York; There's the Air, Derek Eller Gallery, New York; and Touch'd Lustre, Zieher Smith & Horton, New York. Group exhibitions include Of Flesh and Air, Marta Cervera Gallery, Madrid; The Feminine in Abstract Painting, Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, New York; Deep! Down! Inside!, Hales Gallery, New York; and New Skin, curated by Jason Stopa, Monica King Gallery, New York. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, ArtNews, Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe. Grill lives and works in Queens, New York.

Grill says, "My work often borrows from antique embroidery samplers. I like their obsessive handiwork, gorgeous materiality, their somber mood and feminine energy. I unravel their imagery, layering over and then picking at it with brushes and fingers, burying it and dusting it off until each painting seems to breathe and buzz in its own color climate. To make paintings requires utter attention and complete care. In a noisy world, it's a radical act of being quiet, being open, and looking with eyes wide like it's dark out."

Margaux Ogden

Margaux Ogden (b. 1983, Boston, Massachusetts) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Ogden received a bachelor's degree from Bard College in 2005 and a master of fine arts in painting from Boston University in 2012. Solo exhibitions include White Cube online exhibition (2024); Tif Sigfrids in Athens, Georgia (2024); Deanna Evans Projects, New York (2023); Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco (2023); Rental Gallery in East Hampton, New York (2018); and Embajada in San Juan, Puerto Rico (2016). Residencies include Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Yaddo, and the British School at Rome. In 2018 she was a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant recipient. Ogden's work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Cultured, Modern Painters, The Paris Review, BOMB, and Galerie, among other publications.

Ogden says, "As is often the case with my work, I’m searching for a gesture or glimpse into art history or contemporary life ... and then using these fragments to build out a system of abstraction. The patterned repetition of color speaks directly to my work, especially how the image evolves when it spins. There’s an eerie beauty to it. It feels very much reflective of nature."

Painting Sonifications

The Center for the Arts collaborated with the Mind Music Machine (tri-M) Lab to develop painting sonifications in conjunction with Clare Grill and Margaux Ogden’s fall 2025 exhibition.

Professor Myounghoon “Philart” Jeon, director of the tri-M Lab, and Yeaji Lee, Ph.D., translated two selected artworks into sound by analyzing visual elements such as color, texture, and style, as well as artist-provided descriptions, which informed the interpretive process. The visual details of each painting were rendered into musical compositions through advanced algorithms and polished by the tri-M Lab to reflect the mood and genre.  

Painting sonification offers visitors with visual impairments an accessible avenue to engage with artwork, while also presenting an exciting multisensory experience for all visitors.

Painting sonifications for Margaux Ogden’s Bathers (Permanent Green, Viridian Green, Pink, Green Gold and Turquoise), 2025; and Clare Grill’s Crack, 2024, provided by Myounghoon “Philart” Jeon and Yeaji Lee, Ph.D., through the Mind Music Machine (tri-M) Lab at Virginia Tech in collaboration with the Center for the Arts, Grill, and Ogden. Paintings courtesy of the artists.

This exhibition is supported in part by a gift from Ms. Deborah L. Brown.

Images

Clare Grill (all oil on linen, courtesy of Derek Eller Gallery, New York): 1) Crack, 2024; 58 x 44 inches. 2) Flip, 2024; 46 x 42 inches. 3) Twist, 2024; 60 x 55 inches. 4) Bell, 2023; 60 x 55 inches. 5) Spine, 2024; 64 x 48 inches.
Margaux Ogden (all acrylic on canvas, courtesy of the artist): 1) Bathers (Quinacridone Magenta, Pyrrole Red, Orange, Green and Turquoise), 2025 (detail); 64 x 48 inches. 2) Bathers (Permanent Green, Viridian Green, Pink, Green Gold and Turquoise), 2025 (detail); 64 x 48 inches. 3) Bathers (Permanent Green, Quinacridone Magenta & Indian Yellow Hue), 2024 (detail); 64 x 48 inches. 4) Bathers (Permanent Green, Quinacridone Magenta & Indian Yellow Hue), 2024 (detail); 64 x 48 inches. 5) Bathers (Phthalo Green, Magenta, Cyan & Red), 2024; 70 x 60 inches.