Must See February Art Exhibitions

February’s art exhibitions across the RI region reward close looking and sustained attention. A standout is “Freeze Frame” at Front Room Gallery in Hudson, an all-star group show drawn from the gallery’s roster that treats stillness as a charged, generative state. Elsewhere, artists revisit landscape, portraiture, photography, and history—whether probing the Anthropocene, reclaiming overlooked legacies, or examining how images shape memory and power. Together, these exhibitions reflect a moment when restraint, material intelligence, and historical awareness feel extra important.

“Taha Clayton: Historic Presence” at Tremaine Gallery at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut

February 14-April 5

In Historic Presence, Brooklyn-based painter Taha Clayton channels heritage, history, and hope into richly detailed oil paintings and works on paper at the Tremaine Gallery. Grounded in realistic portraiture, Clayton’s art confronts mistruths of Black antiquity and elevates elders, everyday strength and resilience as central to the American story. Drawing inspiration from the 1930s through the 1950s, his canvases juxtapose historical references with futuristic allusions, exploring social injustice, spiritual energy and bloodline in visual narratives that feel both grounded and visionary. Curated by Terri Moore, this exhibition celebrates culture and legacy with luminous technique and profound dignity.

“Flora / Fauna / Form” at Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge

February 13–March 1

This annual juried exhibition by the Guild of Berkshire Artists explores how artists interpret the natural world through structure, pattern, and material. Painting, photography, sculpture, and mixed media works draw from botanical and animal forms without slipping into straightforward naturalism, emphasizing abstraction, repetition, and ecological tension. Installed in the Leonhardt Galleries, the show underscores the ongoing conversation between art practice and environmental observation in the Berkshires.

“Creatura” and “Unleashed” at Five Points Gallery, Torrington

February 6–March 21

Five Points Gallery presents two concurrent exhibitions that examine the animal world as both subject and metaphor. In "Creatura," Bridget Grady’s paintings and drawings emerge from close observation of animals encountered in her life, shaped by imagination, literature, and memory. Her work resists sentimentality, instead positioning animals as sentient presences—beings that look back and demand attention.

Installed across the West and TSB galleries, "Unleashed" brings together seven artists whose practices range from woodcut printmaking to carved sculpture and woven paper. Collectively, the exhibition considers animals as symbolic stand-ins for human behavior, moral tension, and cultural projection. Folklore, humor, taxonomy, and material experimentation intersect, creating a multifaceted portrait of how the animal kingdom continues to shape artistic inquiry and human self-understanding.

“Bunmei Kaika: Political Landscapes in Early Modern and Modern Japan” at Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie

February 14-June 7

This sweeping exhibition at the Lehman Loeb explores how Japanese political upheaval from the late Edo into the Meiji era shaped a vibrant print culture. Taking its name from bunmei kaika—“civilization and enlightenment,” a slogan tied to rapid Westernization—the show centers on woodblock prints that captured cultural and physical transformations at home and abroad. Drawn mostly from the Loeb’s collection with select loans, the installation highlights works by masters such as Hiroshige, Hokusai, Kunisada, Yoshitoshi, Kiyochika, and Ogata Gekko. Images range from sensational battlefield reports to landscapes that helped cultivate a modern national imagination.

“The Drawing Show” at Carrie Haddad in Hudson

January 30-March 22
Opening reception on January 31 from 5-7pm.

Drawing takes center stage in this expansive group exhibition at Carrie Haddad that treats the medium not as a preparatory step, but as a fully realized mode of thinking. Works by Mark Beard, Linda Newman Boughton, David Dew Bruner, Sue Bryan, Paul Chojnowski, Donise English, Kathryn Freeman, Louise Laplante, Glenn Palmer-Smith, and David Soman move between accumulation and erasure, narrative and abstraction, precision and intuition. From Boughton’s lush ballpoint forestscapes to Chojnowski’s torch-singed nocturnes and English’s system-driven abstractions, the exhibition unfolds as a series of quiet, layered conversations about mark-making, memory, and restraint.

“Freeze Frame” Front Rom Gallery in Hudson

January 31-February 22
Opening reception January 31, 4-6pm.

An all-star group exhibition drawn from Front Room Gallery’s deep bench of Hudson Valley talent, “Freeze Frame” brings together painting, photography, sculpture, and mixed media works that linger in moments of suspended time. Artists including Thomas Broadbent, Sasha Bezzubov, Ken Butler, Peggy Cyphers, Debra Drexler, Stephen Mallon, Joanne Ungar, and Zoe Wetherall approach stillness from multiple angles—isolating decisive gestures, heightening tension, or translating pause into abstract and material form. Across the gallery, motion is implied rather than shown, sharpening perception and inviting closer looking. A concise survey of a roster in full stride.

“Sita Gomez: A Retrospective” at Hudson Hall

February 7-April 4
Opening reception February 7, 5-7pm.

This sweeping retrospective at Hudson Hall restores overdue attention to Sita Gomez, the Cuban-American painter and sculptor whose fiercely expressive work spans more than seven decades. Bringing together paintings, drawings, and sculptures from the 1950s to today, the exhibition traces Gomez’s lifelong focus on women—saints and sinners, matriarchs and ingénues—rendered in saturated color and unapologetic artifice. Shaped by a life marked by exile and reinvention, Gomez’s work grapples with gender, power, faith, and survival with wit and defiance. Chronogram featured Gomez on its October 2021 cover; this exhibition affirms her enduring relevance.