Friends and Neighbors

This October, Milk Moon is pleased to present ‘Friends and Neighbors’, a group show featuring four of our favorite painters from the San Juan Mountains. Artists Emma Kalff, Emily Palmquist, Meredith Nemirov, and Tammi Brazee draw inspiration from both the striking natural environs of the Rockies, and the many facets of everyday life in our wild and remote corner of the Southwest. ‘Friends and Neighbors’ is a love letter to the natural beauty of our home and the deep well of talent it houses.

In her complex and personal oil paintings, Palmquist utilizes self portraiture, abstraction, and intimate, symbolic representations of the plants, animals, and landscapes of the Southwest to explore her inner world. The animal denizens of the Rockies also make frequent appearances in Brazee’s oil and acrylic paintings, employed as clever (and delightfully humorous) metaphors for aspects of the human psyche. 

Beginning as plein air studies, Kalff’s observant oil paintings juxtapose the striking landscapes of the San Juans with quiet moments of daily life in intimate, evocative scenes which feel simultaneously place-specific and widely relatable. Also a plein air painter, Nemirov draws on countless hours spent painting and sketching outside in her variously abstracted mixed media works that explore the natural world through the lenses of conservation, history, and ecology.