“Maine is in my DNA,” said the artist Tessa Greene O’Brien in 2024. Born there in 1982, O’Brien was educated at Skidmore College and earned an MFA from the Maine College of Art and Design. Her paintings are technical marvels, beginning with the canvas, which is stitched together from a number of fabrics, then bleached, painted, waxed, all actions moving toward an image that is rooted in the life around her, yet feels otherworldly too—imposing and receding at once. “I grew up looking at Andrew Wyeth’s paintings and drawings,” she has said, “which have such honesty, integrity, and rigor.” Those words apply to O’Brien’s art as well. Her first solo exhibition in New York City takes place across two galleries—Alexandre and Candice Madey. —Laura Jacobs

More paintings from “Poems From Here” are located at Candice Madey, 1 Rivington Street, New York