In Pastels, Sara Anstis turns soft pastel on paper into a stage for elusive stories, folding mythology, nursery rhymes, and art historical echoes into small-scale scenes. Presented at Olney Gleason, the solo show leans into the artists recent shift toward muted, autumnal tones, a marked contrast to her earlier, more neon-inflected palette. The works look closely to medieval and early Renaissance sources while maintaining the hazy charge of dreams.
Art history, nursery rhymes, and quietly surreal acts
The drawings teem with curious activities: a figure appears subsumed by a bookcase; another is wrapped in a green sleeping bag beneath a makeshift tent; a bathtub is fitted with oars; sleepers stack like pancakes. In The Horse Rider (2026), stoic three-quarter profiles reflect expressions seen in 15th-century works by Fra Angelico and Hans Memling. The Painter (2026) nods to the medieval convention of saints gathered at a holy figures feet, here reimagined as women looking reverently toward a female artist and the drawn likeness of a womans form. Another recurring animal motif connects to Leonardo da Vinci and Lady with an Ermine.
Maternity threads through the exhibition, influenced in part by Paula Modersohn-Beckers 1906 Self-Portrait at 6th Wedding Anniversary. Anstiss interest in mythology and subjectivity surfaces across portraits and more overtly narrative scenes: in The Milkman (2026), disembodied arms loop a small dog around a womans shoulders, while Lachrymatories (2025) shows a pensive woman walking past numerous tiny vials once thought to collect mourners tears in ancient Greece and Rome. The nursery rhyme Ten in the Bed, sometimes sung as Three in the Bed, hovers over Three heads in a bed (2025).
Soft pastels and the texture of dreams
Soft pastel is both symbolic and practical here, building atmospheres where edges blur and stories stay suggestive. An intimate sense of touch that charges her scenes with introspective intensity, the gallery says. Women in these images inhabit their surroundingshorseback riding, reading, paintingwith an air of veneration, as if each frame captured a fragment of some rite. Anstis tips her hat to the absurd and slightly cartoonish, letting irrational dream logic guide the compositions.
- Hanging fish (2026), pastel on paper, 15 x 20 1/2 inches
- Ermine (2026), pastel on paper, 13 3/8 x 18 1/8 inches
- The Painter (2026), pastel on paper, 9 7/8 x 8 1/4 inches
- The Horse Rider (2026), pastel on paper, 11 1/8 x 8 7/8 inches
- The Milkman (2026), pastel on paper, 10 5/8 x 9 inches
- Library (2026), pastel on paper, 12 3/4 x 10 3/8 inches
- Lachrymatories (2025), pastel on paper, 8 1/8 x 6 1/4 inches
- Three heads in a bed (2025), pastel on paper, 4 1/4 x 5 5/8 inches
- Tent (2025), pastel on paper, 8 x 10 1/4 inches
Pastels is on view through October 24 in New York City. Images courtesy of Olney Gleason. See more on the artists Instagram.
