Description

What’s In A Voice is an invigorating solo exhibition by artist Talya Baharal, the 2025 Goetemann Artist Residency Distinguished Artist, showcasing her paintings that explore the evolving journey of an artist finding and refining her abstract voice. Each work reflects her deep engagement with the visual world—unintended compositions seen, absorbed, and reimagined through the language of abstraction.

From asphalt repairs and fractured ice sheets to a humble mended seam or a mangled wire in a trash heap, these everyday moments are transmuted into abstract forms. They become part of Baharal’s imaginary landscapes—a vocabulary that speaks of fragility, transformation, and quiet resilience.

“Excavating and disturbing surfaces—whether metaphorically or physically—has been an ongoing theme in all my work. Revealing visual remnants of the struggles and discoveries is at the essence of my painting path. I paint for those moments of clarity. I paint for the times I find the courage to destroy and rebuild. I paint to feel alive.”

Previously known for her work as a sculptor and studio jeweler, Baharal’s sculptural sensibility and fascination with decay and containment remain foundational. Her attention to vessels, structures, and imagined terrains carries into her paintings, which are rich with layered meaning and form.

Using acrylic paint, ink, and mixed media—including torn paintings and photographic images of earlier sculptural work—Baharal activates each composition with a dynamic interplay of gesture and collage. Lines emerge, disappear, and re-emerge across the surface, creating an armature that holds the visual narrative together.

Her process is one of excavation: revealing, concealing, and reworking, until the painting speaks with authenticity.

Opening Reception: Thursday, August 7, 5-7pm
Artist Talk: Sunday, August 10, 5-6pm, The Cultural Center at Rocky Neck, Gloucester, MA
Gallery Hours: Thursday & Friday, 3-7pm; Saturday, 12-7pm; Sunday, 12-4pm; Monday, 11am-2pm

Read more about the artist and exhibit HERE.

Featured image: Attempting to Speak, Talya Baharal