Review: The Duality of Thérèse Mulgrew: Photorealism and Dutch Still Life painting

Thérèse Mulgrew’s “Strawberry Milk,” 2025, oil on canvas, 16×12 inches is part of the artist’s exhibition at Andrew Reed Gallery. (Photo courtesy of Andrew Reed Gallery)

In Thérèse Mulgrew’s paintings at Andrew Reed Gallery, two visually similar but distinct underlying motives are at play. She paints both still life and narrative paintings, using the same technique of realism. However, the still lifes are explorations of everyday objects that elevate the ordinary. Conversely, the narrative paintings, which include people, draw on film noir imagery and employ ambiguity, encouraging viewers to look for clues and piece together a story. Instead of offering a single interpretation, these works use suggestion to encourage curiosity and involvement.

It’s the gallery’s first exhibition of work by the Chicago-based artist and her first solo exhibition in Miami.

Mulgrew’s narrative paintings are connected to Photorealism, which developed from Pop Art and was a reaction against Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States.

Photorealists used photography as a reference to create their artworks, and this was considered a radical development in art making. Interestingly, during that time, the artists who acknowledged their use of photographs in Photorealism faced harsh criticism, even though photography had been used as a visual aid by artists since the 15th century.

“Late Night Toast,” 2025, oil on canvas, 48 x 72 inches (Photo by Andrew Reed Gallery)

Thus, Mulgrew uses photographs as source materials for her work. She employs implication, the seen and the unseen, using tight cropping and compression of space. The wide-angle lens in her photos can be observed in some of the foreshortening, and the sense that some objects, like an egg cup, seem ready to fly off the table.

In “Late Night Toast,” a dizzying painting of drinking and poker, one can see the specificity of olives versus lemon rind in the martinis while the people’s heads are edited out, beyond the frame of the canvas. These details increase and complicate the narrative. Slowly, the clues reveal themselves, such as the watch in the card game’s pot. This is an especially cinematic vision within this exhibition. It hangs across the gallery from “Cigarette Drag,” the same scene. The left hand of a woman gives her a cigarette to puff on to a tank-topped man. Neither wears a wedding ring, and they become anonymized and universal by being faceless. The pause in the game, the length of a cigarette draw, is the duration of this image cinematically.

Mulgrew’s people are primarily represented by their hands, considered to be among the most difficult things to paint. Rings, as well as a watch and a necklace, reappear in the paintings, creating a weave of time and space. This is the artist’s world where she finds her subject matter: at breakfast, lunch, or over drinks while playing cards.

In “Breakfast IV,” a simple breakfast of eggs and hearty bread locates these works in a northern European milieu, as well as the checked tablecloth, eggcup (a rarity in the United States), and tomatoes with breakfast.

“Cigarette Drag,” 2025. oil on canvas, 24 x 30 inches. (Photo courtesy of Andrew Reed Gallery)

The gesture over the breast could loosely reference the famous yet anonymous “Portrait Présumé de Gabrielle d’Estrées et de sa sœur la duchesse de Villars” at the Louvre Museum in Paris from 1594, the action of which symbolizes the subject’s pregnancy or lesbian eroticism, depending on who is doing the looking.

Interestingly, a ring is important in this painting, like those in Mulgrew’s. It is not the most compelling aspect of the painting, nor is it highlighted, but, like Mulgrew, it expands the storyline behind the image. Additionally, like Mulgrew, this detail comes into focus as one spends time with the work.

In “Nudes,” the protagonist sits at a table, looking at a book of black-and-white artwork of women, with a pair of scissors at hand. There’s black coffee, an unsmoked cigarette, accompanied by a boom box and two different kinds of flowers. In Dutch still-life painting, flowers carried specific symbology. Optically, the orange tablecloth creates a pressure in the pictorial space, unmooring these objects.

This leads to the still life paintings, which have a comparatively simple read. The term itself is paradoxical as it combines two words that seem to be opposites: still implies motionlessness, while life implies aliveness and vitality. Dutch still-life paintings were very desirable to the rising merchant class of the Netherlands. Its main message was to depict the corruption of everything earthly and the transience of life.

“Nudes,” 2025, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches. (Photo courtesy of Andrew Reed Gallery)

Books, scrolls, watches, musical instruments, and pipes were often depicted. One of the main symbols has become a human skull, reminiscent of the mortality of all living things. The curation of the exhibition is laid out to highlight the contrast of the narrative and the still life paintings.

These paintings can be read symbolically while marveling over the facility of her Realism. The connection between a strawberry and a rosary, the significance of salt and pepper shakers, and an interest in images of flowers and desserts are meant to be generated by the audience. The symbology is universally accessible, regardless of the personal meaning for the artist.

A wonderful thing about seeing an exhibition is that you can then visit the world with the artist’s  “filter” on for a while. Walking out of Mulgrew’s exhibition, the shine of metal in the hot Florida sun burns extra bright against the pavement. Cars, for example, take on a new glow, a mental photoshopping. Next time you are in a social setting, can you imagine it from the point of view of Thérèse Mulgrew? This is one of the unsung benefits of viewing art.

WHAT: “Thérèse Mulgrew: Soft Hours”

WHERE: Andrew Reed Gallery, 800 NW 22nd St., Miami

WHEN: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday. Through Aug. 16.

COST: Free

INFORMATION: 786-427-3131 and www.andrewreedgallery.com

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