Polly Shindler
Valley Music
February 3 - 28, 2026
Opening Reception: Friday, February 6th 6-8 PM

Deanna Evans Projects is pleased to present Valley Music, a solo exhibition of new works by Polly Shindler. This will be her second solo exhibition with the gallery and it will be on view at 370 Broadway, on the second floor, from February 3 - 28, 2026. 

The spring of 2022 marked a significant shift in Shindler’s life and practice when she moved to the Hudson Valley in New York. It was her first time living in a rural environment, where each destination was at least 20 minutes from one another; a big change in her daily life in a city. However, these long car rides were accompanied by the most incredible views of farms, untamed forests and waterways. As she turned corners onto fantastic new vistas, she became noticeably removed from her typical thoughts and confronted with the rhythm of the landscape.

It took a few years, but these new surroundings found its way fully into her studio. The paintings became more about the shapes, textures and colors around her, and her striving to reflect the abstract in the landscape and the repetitions in the mountains and farmland. These patterns, with their movement and emotionality, reminded her of music.

Becoming increasingly more invested in how to use paint as a language, Shindler uses luster and opacity to depict weather shifts, ocean waves and crawling mountains. And in a few scaled up canvases, Shindler was able to address the magnitude of encountering the sublime nature of the landscape, pushing the viewer to feel small in front of the canvas as one would feel in the vast hills and valleys of upstate NY.

In this body of work, Shindler references her study of Gustav Klimt, specifically, The Maidens for its stacked and overflowing patterns and Klimt’s attention to curving negative space, and The Sunflower, for its representation of a body and a flower. This influence is most clearly seen in Shindler's new work, Women/Flowers, in which she translates figures through flowers.

Valley Music is a tribute to the harmony found in the landscape of her new home.

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Polly Shindler received an M.F.A. in Painting from Pratt Institute and B.A. in History from University of Massachusetts. Solo exhibitions include Valley Music and Windows at Deanna Evans Projects in NYC, Retreat at Ortega y Gasset Projects and Tennis Elbow at The Journal Gallery, NYC. She had her first solo fair presentation at NADA in Miami in 2024 with Deanna Evans Projects. Upcoming shows include group exhibitions at Hashimoto Contemporary in NYC and Headwaters Art Center in Stamford, NY.  Recent group shows include Ochi Gallery in Ketchum, ID, Chozick Family Gallery in NYC and Heaven Gallery in Chicago. Polly was awarded the Martha Boschen Porter Grant in 2023. Her painting Green Rocking Chair shown in Still Lives, a group show at Underdonk in Brooklyn, was featured in “Goings on About Town” in the New Yorker in 2018. Shindler has attended residencies at Yaddo, Vermont Studio Center and Wassaic Project. Polly lives in Millerton, NY in the Hudson Valley.