October 13 – November 15, 2025
Davenport Gallery, Vidinghoff Gallery
Reception: Sunday, October 19, 2025 3-5pm
Curator’s Gallery Talk with Scott Noel: Saturday, November 1, 2025 11am
The work on view in CONTRE-JOUR AND THE CORINTHIAN MAID at Wayne Art Center was chosen by exhibition curator Scott Noel for its distinguished and expressive depiction of the presence and power of light. Noel presents work by accomplished contemporary artists Jeffrey Carr, Chris Feiro, Frank Galuszka, Philip Geiger, Mark Green, Paul Raphaelson and Elaine S. Wilson in Wayne Art Center’s Davenport and Vidinghoff Galleries from October 13 through November 15, 2025.
In Greek mythology, picture-making begins when a young woman traces her lover’s shadow on a lamp lit wall. The Corinthian Maid’s invention is suggestive of all the myriad ways image-making projects appearances onto surfaces and the degree to which a likeness can be distilled to a silhouette. The maid’s shadow-tracing reaches back to the caves’ depictions of sacred animals and forward to photography’s shimmering fields of light and shadow. Contre-jour, “against the day,” is a painting motif that studies the meetings of different fields of light. The classic example is an inside-outside picture in which a brilliant outdoor light, framed by a window, holds a figure in silhouette. The artists in this show, six painters and a photographer, each explore the possibilities of contre-jour to manifest places in the world, an abandoned factory in Brooklyn, a Michigan dairy barn, scenes of the Pacific coast and the unexpected strangeness of domestic interiors and suburban homes characterized by the interdependence of the profiles created by light. - Curator Scott Noel
An exhibition catalog for CONTRE-JOUR AND THE CORINTHIAN MAID is available for purchase at the Wayne Art Center Gallery Shop.
Contre-Jour Painting Workshop with Scott Noel
Scott Noel, Curator CONTRE-JOUR AND THE CORINTHIAN MAID
After completing undergraduate studies at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, Noel moved to Philadelphia in 1978. His first important solo exhibition was in the Fleisher Challenge Series in 1980. Since that time, he has mounted over 40 major shows across the country. Noel is represented by Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia and his work is included in numerous private, public and corporate collections including the Museum of the Pennsylvania Academy, the Woodmere Art Museum, the Arkansas Art Center and the Pennsylvania Convention Center. From 1996-2024, Noel taught drawing and painting in the undergraduate and graduate programs at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. His legacy as an educator also includes teaching at The University of the Arts, Arcadia University and Community College of Philadelphia.
Wayne Art Center gratefully acknowledges Scott Noel’s efforts at WAC through the years as an exhibiting artist, exhibition juror and curator. Most recently Noel’s exhibition Eternal Recurrence – Scott Noel – Large Figure Compositions 1982-2014 was on view in WAC’s Davenport Gallery in 2024 at which time Noel also served as juror of The Figure – Portraiture & Narrative, a regional juried exhibition.
Exhibiting Artists
Jeffrey Carr is an artist and educator and the former Dean of the School of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, PA. Since his retirement to San Diego, he has been painting the landscapes of Southern California. Originally from La Jolla, California, he graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz, attended the New York Studio School, and received his M.F.A. in painting from the Yale University School of Art.
Chris Feiro was born and raised in Duluth, MN. He received his BFA in painting from The Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1998 and his MFA in painting from Indiana University in 2000. In his work he is committed to painting and drawing his immediate surroundings from direct observation.
Frank Galuszka is a painter living in Santa Cruz, CA. He has an MFA from Tyler School of Art. He is also a writer. He teaches painting at the University of California, Santa Cruz where he is a professor in the art department.
Philip Geiger completed a BFA degree at Washington University in St. Louis in 1978, and, two years later, his MFA at Yale. He began his teaching career at Colorado State in 1980. In 1983 he became a professor of painting and drawing at the University of Virginia, molding generations of young artists for the next 33 years. Meanwhile, Geiger emerged as one of the most significant interpreters of the figure in interior space at work in contemporary painting. He has had numerous exhibits around the country: Tibor de Nagy Gallery and Tastistcheff in New York City; Hackett-Freedman in San Francisco; Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, VA; the More Gallery in Philadelphia; Hidell Brooks in Charlotte, N.C., and Steven Francis in Lynchburg, Va., which is currently overseeing a retrospective of Geiger’s work.
Mark Green studied painting at Washington University in St. Louis and received his master’s degree in painting from University of Delaware. Green lived in Paris, France for seven years, teaching at Parsons School of Design’s satellite campus, and worked as an illustrator in San Diego, CA before settling in Tarrytown, NY as an independent school art instructor.
Paul Raphaelson is an artist known for photographing liminal spaces between the residential and industrial, occupied and abandoned, domesticated and feral. He’s based in Philadelphia and Brooklyn.
Elaine S. Wilson earned her BFA at Washington University in St. Louis School of Art, and her MFA in painting from Yale School of Art. Her work is in the collections of Grand Rapids Art Museum, Library of Congress, the DC Art Bank, University of Michigan, and Herman Miller among other public and private collections. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Grant, The Bethesda Painting Award, and an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant.
