Reynolds Gallery is pleased to announce the opening Spaces Between, a solo exhibition of paintings and monotypes by Isabel Bigelow. The exhibition opens on Friday, September 5, 2025 with a public reception from 5 – 7 pm and runs through October 24, 2025.
Grass Field, 2009, Oil on panel, 40 x 50 inches
Organized in collaboration with Isabel Bigelow’s family after her passing July 7, 2024, Spaces Between exhibits a survey of the artist’s oil on panel paintings made between 1998 and 2017. This span of paintings demonstrates Isabel’s characteristic layered and sensitive surfaces that translate her daily observations into visual meditations. She was known for her attentive process: adding several coats of gesso and delicate layers of thinly applied oil paint that she gently burnished. The result was a smoothly finished painting that vibrates with the hum of nature’s energy. Shadows across the floor, leaves overhead and ripples on a lake surface are abstracted. Isabel’s buzzy surface treatment creates balance, giving equal weight to the foreground’s objects and the spaces between.
Isabel Bigelow’s relationship with Reynolds Gallery spans nearly three decades, beginning with her first solo exhibition in 1997. Spaces Between marks her eighth solo presentation with the gallery and stands as a poignant tribute to an artist who shaped both the gallery’s identity and the Richmond arts community. Isabel’s work was not only widely collected, but deeply cherished, and her steadfast commitment to Reynolds Gallery played an instrumental role in the gallery’s success. Her friendship and support were a profound source of pride for Bev Reynolds. We are sincerely grateful to Isabel’s family for their help in organizing this exhibition and entrusting us with the privilege of sharing her legacy. It is an honor to present Spaces Between and to once again witness the quiet beauty of the world seen through Isabel’s eyes.
A statement from Isabel Bigelow’s family
Isabel Bigelow (March 25, 1966 – July 7, 2024)
It is hard to capture Isabel’s art in a statement. After all she did not enjoy explaining her own work, so it feels odd for us to try to do so now. But also, it takes too many words. Isabel was a minimalist virtuoso, able to convey the essence and beauty of a thing without excess or waste. The feeling of morning light through a window blind, the pure joy of a satisfying shape, the subtle relief of snow against a grey afternoon sky, the melancholy of a lone rock in the water – these are ephemeral moments, impossible for us to hold onto, yet caught by Isabel’s paintings and prints, lingering and drawing us into her sense of the world. Rarely strictly representational, her art reverberates with the shapes, textures, and palettes that she returned to again and again. Much of her work comes from the places Isabel loved – New York City, the Hudson Valley, and Maine. Spending time with her art draws us into these scenes and the emotions they evoke – the shadow of a tree, the structure of a water tower, the cracks left by a brook in the snow, the furrows of a field. Time expands and contracts. Light shifts and wanes. The familiar becomes abstract.
Isabel was born in New York City. Though she moved not long after to Alexandria, VA, New York was always a homing beacon to her. After graduating from Harvard College in 1989 she returned to the city and continued her fine art training at the Art Student’s League in Manhattan. She later completed an MFA at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. In 1992 Isabel met Luis Castro, an artist from Venezuela who became her life partner. From their walkup in the East Village to her walkup studio on the Lower East Side, Isabel was in perpetual motion. She soaked in the city, absorbing its planes and spaces and angles and light. When their daughter Lucia was born in 2006, they started shifting from the city to the Hudson Valley, eventually moving full time to Ghent, NY. Luis built a spectacular studio where she developed her craft as she began to draw from the landscape around her – the low fences, the rolling hills, and the changing light and seasons. And from childhood, Isabel visited Maine every summer with her family. There she absorbed the constantly shifting tree canopies, shadowed rocks, and evanescent light on the water’s horizon. All these places provided stable, yet ever changing, landmarks for her observant eyes. Isabel distilled and refined what she saw into her paintings and prints through careful, meticulous, and iterative practice as she labored to perfect the delicate textures, pigments, and surfaces that are the signature features of her work.
The Reynolds Gallery has been ever present throughout Isabel’s career. Bev Reynolds (d. 2014), the gallery founder, first met Isabel through her mother Deborah Ellis, an artist whose work the gallery has represented since the 1980s. Bev had a wonderful ability to identify and nurture contemporary artists. As Isabel explored various media, from ink on mylar to oil on panel or paper to monotypes, Bev always championed her art, including Isabel in group exhibitions, promoting her work to museum and private collectors, and holding eight solo shows. Isabel’s family is grateful and honored to be a part of the Reynolds community that Bev built and cultivated over many decades.
It is impossible to express the loss we feel. Isabel was everything – kind, funny, smart, sensitive, thoughtful, and beautiful. To have her art is a gift, allowing us to continue to see the world as she did and to remain in conversation with her.
Red Islands, 2005, Oil on panel, 30 x 60 inches