VALERIE MENDELSON is a painter and art historian living in Maine and New York. She has exhibited in New York and Maine and has published articles on the sculptor Mabel Gardner (Routledge Press 2024), on collecting including “Rooms and Galleries” Bloomsbury Press (2019), among others. Her book, Beautiful Things, on nineteenth century collectors in Paris is now out from Brill (Leiden) 2026.
“Baudelaire called Delacroix’s palette “a bouquet.” Flowers are emblematic of painting for me. Their fragility, their ephemerality and their extravagance enthrall me. I also love that flower paintings are generally considered a ‘minor’ genre, a ‘feminine’ genre.
While my practice is informed by paintings of the past, I like to be overwhelmed by my surroundings. My landscapes, often plunged in the utter newness of not knowing where I am, are done from life amidst the bugs and the wind ands the sun. Confusions of figure and ground correspond to the color choices and mark marking of nature itself.
Every so often my work comes inside. Sometimes it’s during the winter when the snow is piling up outside and pulling on my boots and standing in the drifts feels like too much. Other times, I just get fascinated with the landscape of the interior; arrangements of color, of shape evoke a way of life and which often include paintings of the outdoors. But often, the outdoors draws my eye and I look longingly through the window, drawn towards the shifting light and shadows on gardens or brick walls. This group of paintings, in “At Home and Abroad,” is a record of that indoor meditation.” – Valerie Mendelson on her recent works in the 2026 AT HOME AND ABROAD exhibition at Caldbeck Gallery.