Garvey|Simon is proud to present Explorations, featuring artists Lisa Lebofsky, Michelle Doll, Alyssa Monks, Carrie-Ann Bracco, and Melanie Vote. With a history of traveling the globe together, these five artists bring a collection of paintings inspired by their explorations in nature.

About the artists

Carrie-Ann Bracco was born on Long Island, NY. She received her B.A. from Columbia University, a Master of Fine Arts in Painting from the New York Academy of Art, and a Master of Science in Sustainability Management, also from Columbia University. She spent several years living abroad in Italy, England and Bolivia. She now resides in Brooklyn, NY.

The majority of Carrie's art is focused on human relationship to the natural environment. Inspired by travels and artist residencies in such places as Peru, the Arctic Circle, Patagonia, and elsewhere, the paintings from these expeditions address the ethereal quality of mythic and fragile landscapes. our tenuous co-existence with the Earth.

Carrie's work has been included in exhibits at the New York Academy of Sciences, the National Arts Club, the Flowers Gallery, and the Mark Miller Gallery. In 2011, she was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. In 2014, her artwork was included in The Figure, edited by Margaret McCann and published by Skira/Rizzoli Press.

Born in Canton, Ohio, Michelle Doll received her BFA from Kent State University and her MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2006. She currently lives and works in Hoboken, NJ, and is an adjunct professor at New Jersey City University. She has taught numerous workshops worldwide in cities such as Rome, Oslo, and New York. Doll received a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Prince of Wales / Forbes Foundation Travel Grant, Artist in Residence at Eden Rock on St. Barth's (French West Indies), and received The Bennett Prize Honorable Mention. Her paintings have been exhibited internationally in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Miami, London, Barcelona, Oslo, Salzburg, and Basel.

She was recently represented by Lyons Wier Gallery in Manhattan from 2014 – 2020 and her work is in the Public Collections of HRH Prince of Wales, The Eileen Kaminsky Family Foundation, and the Hudson Foundation Art Collection. Michelle's artwork has been the subject of numerous interviews and Podcasts such as ArtSpeak NYC, American Art Collectors Magazine, Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, White Hot Magazine, Evolved Magazine, John Dalton Podcast, The Drop Interviews, and Mother Artist Podcast. Her work is also featured in numerous books including "The Figure," by Margaret McCann (a Rizzoli Publication) and “The Figurative Artists Handbook," by Robert Zeller (Published by Monacelli Studio).

Lisa Lebofsky is a nomadic plein-air painter. She paints the susceptibility of nature, correlating its restlessness with our human vulnerabilities. Her direct participation with the landscape is vital to imbue a painting with the energy of a specific place so that viewers can connect viscerally. The paintings are on surfaces that remain visible through various layers of paint, permeating the entire image. The push and pull of lights and darks, opacity and transparency, abstract and real, enhances the variability of these transient scenes. By painting in this dichotomous manner, nature becomes a metaphor for our emotional struggles and encounters.

The artist seeks out areas around the globe that are particularly susceptible to the impacts of climate change and meets with residents to discuss how their community is impacted. To a great extent, these personal interactions inform what areas and what subject matter is ultimately painted. Recent regions visited include Antarctica, Newfoundland and Labrador, Greenland, The Maldives, and St. Lucia.

Currently, Lisa is in the midst of a multi-year mission to travel around North America painting on-site to better understand the changes happening in our environment.

Born in 1977 in New Jersey, Alyssa Monks began oil painting as a child. She studied at The New School in New York and earned her B.A. from Boston College in 1999. During this time she studied painting at Lorenzo de'Medici in Florence. She went on to earn her M.F.A. from the New York Academy of Art in 2001. She has lectured and taught at universities and institutions worldwide. Best known as a figurative painter, these small depictions of nature offer another dimension to her vision.

Monks's paintings have been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions and are represented in public and private collections, including the Savannah College of Arts, the Somerset Art Association, Fullerton College, the Seavest Collection, The Bennett Collection, and the collections of George Loening, Eric Fischl, Howard Tullman, Gerrity Lansing, Danielle Steele, Alec Baldwin, and Luciano Benetton. In 2015, Alyssa gave a TED talk at Indiana University discussing her recent work, which is featured on TED.com. Recently, she was named the 16th most influential women artist alive today by Graphic Design Degree Hub. Her work was featured heavily in season 6 of the FX television series The Americans in 2018. She is represented by Forum Gallery, NYC.

Melanie Vote received her BFA from Iowa State University and her MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Art in 1998. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. Vote was a recipient of a Pollock‐Krasner Foundation Grant in 2007 and has been awarded many residencies including The Vermont Studio Center, Jentel in Banner, WY, AHAD in Abu Dhabi, UAE, The Grand Canyon Conservancy, The Weir Farm program in CT, and most recently, Cill Rialaig in County Kerry, Ireland (along with artist-partner Julien Gardair). She has been a visiting artist at numerous schools and has also taught at the New York Academy of Art, New Jersey City University, The New School, and Pratt Institute.

Melanie Vote embarks on a visual exploration of impermanence, emphasizing the ever-changing nature of existence and inviting her viewers to be transported into her forest experiences. Vote's deep connection with trees is palpable and invites reflection on our relationship with the natural world. Raised on a farm in Iowa and now a long-time resident of New York City, her paintings delve into the intricate relationship between humans and the land, linking her formative and present influences in nature. Each of Vote's intimately sized paintings in this exhibition begins en plein air and the artist later weaves subtle narration to the work in the studio.