A big Congratulations to standout artist Claire Sherman, who was recently awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts for 2026, a distinguished award bestowed upon individuals who have demonstrated significant achievement and promise in their scholarly field. With an uncommon range of scale and substantive abstract mark-making, Sherman’s paintings offer a surprising take on the tradition of landscape that is both progressive and transformative.

“The physical quality of paint is something I find very seductive. Paint has the ability to describe, fall apart, be chaotic, rigid, uncontrollable, fluid, and surprising all at once.”
- Claire Sherman

The esteemed artist plans to spend the year ahead researching the ecosystems of the American South and the relationship of William Faulkner’s writing to the southern landscape and the history of the United States.

While Sherman's works are initially and overtly based upon her exploration of nature and its forms, at its essence, Sherman is primarily in pursuit of abstraction and a painterly strata or metaphoric visual which she intuitively locates within her subjects.