Shara Mays, drenched by a summer downpour, 2024, oil and acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 inches

Shara Mays
drenched by a summer downpour, softened by a spring rain

June 29 through July 24, 2024
Opens Saturday, June 29, 6–8pm

Harper’s East Hampton
87 Newtown Lane, East Hampton, NY 11937
Wednesday–Sunday, 10am–6pm

Harper’s is pleased to announce drenched by a summer downpour, softened by a spring rain, Oakland-based artist Shara Mays’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The presentation features new oil paintings by Mays and opens June 29, 6–8pm, with a reception attended by the artist.

drenched by a summer downpour, softened by a spring rain pays homage to the jubilant yet chilling landscapes of the United States. The Black American artist frequently hikes along the seaside cliffs surrounding the Bay Area. These immersive walks in nature are necessary moments of respite for the artist, but also, influential rituals that ground her artistic practice in the complex histories of the American landscape for Black communities. Across the featured works, Mays conjures the spirit of these historiographically charged terrains amidst a smattering of kaleidoscopic hues.

The artist’s visual language is gesturally intuitive: leaning into the freedoms of abstraction, Mays renders electric fields of orbiting marks that dance around introspective compositions. The resultant works capture the essence of blooming life—from the entangled brilliance of verdant foliage alluded to in saturated after the storm, to the tumultuous waters that appear to quake in all who could swim the river. Yet, in these expressionist paintings, Mays never images these geographies directly. The artist instead describes these works as poems: with her enrapturing use of color and visceral mark-making, Mays captures fragments of narrative scenes but never quite the full story. 

Amidst layers of frenetic strokes, the viewer might be transported to the sweltering heat of a summer’s day such as in the titular work drenched by a summer downpour. The painting is an enthralling yet ominous preview of the much-anticipated season. Ripe bursts of orange flit around energetic green and red hues, recalling the slick saturation of fresh flora after a deluge. But hints of moody cyan and auburn can be spotted beyond the foreground. Like untold memories of bygone lands and forgotten seasons, the contentious colors tussle to be seen from the background.

With these accents of darkness, Mays adds striking dimensionality to this work and throughout. drenched by a summer downpour, softened by a spring rain ultimately reckons with the battle of affects and temporalities that inform the land and its histories. For Mays, landscapes are never static; rather, they are resolutely improvisatory and always on the precipice of evolution. With the aid of abstraction, Mays challenges the viewer to unravel the idiosyncrasies of the land. This insightful exhibition is a ballad to the secrets, surprises, and haunts buried beneath the soil.

Shara Mays (b. Princeville, NC) received a BFA from Corcoran College of Art and Design in 2000, and an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 2020. Mays has exhibited her work at venues including James Cohan Gallery, New York (2024); Harper’s, Los Angeles (2024); Hunter Dunbar Projects, New York (2023); San Francisco Art Institute (2021); and de Young Museum, San Francisco (2020). Her work is held in the collections of the Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington, DC; Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas; and International African American Art Museum, Charleston. Most recently, her work has been featured in publications including Artnet, The Guardian, and Juxtapoz. Mays lives and works in Oakland.

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Detail: Shara Mays, drenched by a summer downpour, 2024

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