Donna Moylan Works on Paper (and some small paintings) September 12 - October 11, 2026. This will be the first solo exhibition for Moylan with PDFA. For the exhibition writer Dave King wrote a sensitive and insightful essay about Moylan's work entitled Drink In.

DRINK IN: On Donna Moylan’s Works on Paper

Dave King

Above a landscape as tangled as a human brain, corporeal clouds nestle sleepily against the sky. Are the clouds embracing, right there in the black night? Is the darkness filled with passion and desire? Is this what the clouds do? Against a landscape so plump it might be upholstered, three animals stare placidly,

their eyes matching the stars. No, wait, make that four animals; the soft shape in the box describes two wakeful souls. But whose souls are these, and awake for what reason? Is this the jungle or a play of terrycloth idols? Across another fine landscape dark shadows lie in drifts. A golden field and distant green hedges evoke Acadia, while on the left, against the blue, a spume of leaves rises or falls. Ah, perfection of

late afternoon! But what of the lines that waltz between here and there? Unfettered pink and green, white and pale orange trails. Signifying… Joy? Electricity? Being alive? Making art? And in a landscape of sweet pastels, a gang of five strolls the shore. We see their footprints in the sand and note the outlines of their short jackets as they hoist a sixth figure, recumbent and aglow with intent. This time the dancing

lines come to us as a cloud, and the glow of genius is a landscape unto itself. Do we take it all as reportorial or allegorical? Check out the smiles on those faces…

Donna Moylan’s works often begin with a sense of place; at least, that’s how it can seem to the viewer, whom the paintings position at a slender remove so as to offer the broad scene. It’s a sense of landscape that can evoke Church or Bierstadt, but also Giorgione: the figures carefully placed, the mood sanguine and serene and composed. And then Moylan tweaks this serene sanguine world, and the viewer may ask

herself, “Hey, what was that? What am I noticing? What are those lines, that glow, those starry eyes? What are the clouds doing?” And what is the meaning of such subtle interventions? Moylan’s gestures often throw off the stasis of a recognizable world. She plays with scale, with transparency and simultaneity—in the sense of bringing disparate and surprising things together. She reduces and expands

and combines and reimagines, and she does all sorts of interesting things I can name and describe. It’s a body of work that’s instantly identifiable, yet I’m not sure it’s possible to form a Unified Theory of the Donna Moylan Image.

And there you have the glory of what Moylan offers the viewer. The works are provocative, but each is provocative in its own striking way. Moving from one to the next, we may have the sense of starting over, starting over. Of imagining ourselves—I mean imagining the artist—taking one fresh page after another.

So many fresh journeys! So much to learn and discover.

In his 1967 essay “The Death of the Author,” Roland Barthes writes, “A text’s unity lies not with its author but with its destination,” by which he means that readerly interpretation is often more important than authorly intent. It’s not a view I subscribe blindly to—as a rule I honor the artist more than that—but it’s one I often weigh when considering creative work. I.e.: how much of what I’m feeling is generated by the work’s maker, how much by me? Here lies the beauty of Donna Moylan’s approach.

With each new piece she invites us to invest, to engage, to become active participants in the shared visual/emotional experience—and to be rewarded for doing so. And make no mistake: this is all Moylan’s doing. I may think I’ve discovered something: “Ooh, the animals’ eyes evoke the stars;” “Ah, the gestures enhance the

world beyond;” “Hey, is that a house beyond the trees?” Yet I haven’t discovered anything that wasn’t already there. The artist has placed such tidbits for me to see and enjoy and speculate on, and she does so anew with each image she offers. Being invited into this experience, I grow grateful; there’s no other word for it.

How exactly does she do this? Is it enough to say that Moylan apparently possesses unusual fluidity between a conscious imagination and unconscious (or subconscious) realms? That she strikes me as truly a very daring painter, a woman who will try anything, even disquieting a lovely landscape with electricity-like brushstrokes? That one of the byproducts does indeed seem to be joy? Joy in making, joy in seeing, joy in stretching and growing. Joy of imagination and joy of invention—and here let me evoke Nabokov, not his plots or his characters, but his jubilant intermingling of realism and artifice. It’s not all blunt imagery, of course. There’s plenty of technique. Moylan’s a marvelous draftsperson, with line work so feathery that the border between interior and exterior often blurs. Sometimes it seems the pencil never rises from the surface. And such versatility! Hillsides portrayed one time in great swathes of watercolor,

another in stormy expressionist pastel. My personal taste runs toward the most transparent brushwork, but indeed, clocking Moylan’s uses of material is one of the pleasures of weighing her oeuvre.

And then color. Hillsides that are brown or golden, but also hillsides in every sweet shade of Gatorade. Faces that are dark blue, faces etched with pastel, faces the colors of faces around the globe. Flowers the colors of flowers, but even more so: more pink, more violet and yellow. The sensuality of her artistic

choices cannot be discounted as a factor in how Moylan’s works invite us to look close, to think sharply and fully absorb.

Donna Moylan’s works are enigmatic. We see them and wonder. They are thought provoking and maybe even subjective, in that each of us will delight in quite different aspects. What these works are not, though, is arbitrary or casual; instead they are intentional. They are beautiful to look at and very very generous. In his great 1946 poem “Directive,” Robert Frost moves us through space and time, following a

guide “who only has at heart your getting lost.” Led at last to a forest stream “too lofty and original to rage,” we’re told: “Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.”

So go ahead: drink. ~

Donna Moylan lives in upstate New York and New York City. Her work has been widely exhibited since the 1980s and her resume includes recent solo & group exhibitions including Philip Douglas Fine Art "Some New, Some Historic" in 2025 and a solo exhibition in '25 at Lori Bookstein Gallery in New York plus another at TSL in Hudson, NY in addition to recent group & solo exhibitions at Public Private Gallery in Hudson NY, Von Lintel Gallery in Los Angeles and much more. Her resume also includes extensive reviews and bibliography. To see more of it please go to www.donnamoylan.com

Below are sections for Donna Moylan Works On Paper (and some small paintings) at PDFA.