Drie Chapek
Then Is Now
May 21 - June 27, 2026
Reception: “First Thursday,” June 4, 6-8pm
Artist talk: “Saturday After,” June 6 at noon
We are pleased to announce our fourth one-person exhibition by Washington artist, Drie Chapek. In Then Is Now the artist continues her deeply personal approach to oil painting, inviting viewers to engage with the work on an emotional level. The artist explores both the body and the landscape in paintings of thick expressive oil paint built upon ethereal washes of color.
SHIMMER IN TIME, 2026, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches
“I'm interested in the connection between body and environment. A figure being held by stone in one area moves into dissolving paint in another. The space around a head isn't empty air but consciousness made substance — churning, breathing, growing. These paintings are about the experience of being aware, of being embodied in a world.
The walls of our buildings seem to tell us we are controlled or organized whereas the natural world shows us our wild, the wild that we carry with us indoors. I'm painting what it FEELS like to be conscious and embodied, not what it means.”
–Drie Chapek
“Chapek is the kind of artist for whom legibility becomes a game of hide-and-seeking the sublime, leading us down a path where obfuscating the thing is as meaningful as the thing itself. In her latest solo show at Greg Kucera, this impulse intensifies, as the narrative element in her work continues to be subsumed by abstraction and love of the mark for its own sake. And what love! The body of the paint is as much a character as the demi-bodies emerging from it. ”
Work in exhibition
Learn more about the evolution of Drie Chapek’s work and inspirations in this video by Ryan Warner:
Oil on canvas
48 x 52 inches
$8,500