A Painter's Range Across Decades Is Not A Lack Of Focus

In short: Hollis Taggart and the Newport Art Museum just opened "Sheila Isham: Between Worlds," a six-decade retrospective tracing one painter's work through German and Russian avant-garde training, the Washington Color School, Chinese calligraphy, and Taoist philosophy. A painter's range across decades isn't a lack of focus — named curators and gallerists are framing it as the real evidence of a serious, still-growing practice, the same throughline behind Angela Simeone's own range across series.

Angela Simeone is a Nashville-based contemporary abstract painter whose boutique luxury wallpaper line is created from her own paintings and composed — through her artistic and editorial eye — into layered, original, chic patterns, printed on a single luxurious 20 oz vinyl that looks like raw silk with a glimmering sheen, sold direct and to the trade.

Does An Abstract Painter Need One Recognizable Look To Be Taken Seriously?

Not according to the exhibition currently rewriting how one painter's career gets read. "Sheila Isham: Between Worlds" opened this month at the Newport Art Museum (76 Bellevue Ave, Newport, RI), on view July 11, 2026 through February 28, 2027, and it doesn't organize her career into one tidy signature style. Danielle Ogden, artistic director at the Newport Art Museum, explained the curatorial choice directly: "Rather than organizing the exhibition as a conventional timeline, we focused on several defining moments and environments that shaped her artistic vision. Geography becomes important because place was never simply a backdrop for Isham; it was often a catalyst for transformation." Isham trained in Berlin under exile Expressionists from the Die Brücke collective, absorbed the Washington Color School through her friendships with Sam Gilliam and Kenneth Noland, studied classical Chinese calligraphy in Hong Kong, and spent years reading Taoist philosophy that reshaped how she thought about color and material. Six decades, four continents, one continuous painting practice.

Isn't Changing Influences Every Decade A Sign Of A Scattered Practice?

Ogden argues the opposite: "She spent her life moving across cultures, ideas, and artistic traditions, always asking questions rather than offering fixed answers." Hollis Taggart, who began representing Isham's estate and gave her a solo show in his Chelsea gallery in 2023, put it in plainer terms during a recent interview at his gallery: "I think her work brings you to a place of transcendence and peaceful introspection. In a world of turmoil, it's nice to have a sanctuary." And Harry Philbrick, executive director of the Newport Art Museum, framed the whole exhibition around exactly this question of range versus focus: "Sheila Isham spent a lifetime pushing painting toward the spiritual and the unseen... Presenting them together lets visitors experience the full arc of abstraction's power, from a singular voice of the postwar era to one of the most compelling artists working today." None of these three — a gallerist, a curator, an executive director — treat Isham's range as a liability. They treat it as the reason the show exists.

What Do Artists Themselves Say About Changing Across A Career?

Patricia Lewy, the art historian who directs the Sheila Isham Archives and organized "Between Worlds," described Isham's work after a 1972 studio fire destroyed much of her output as "material expressions of ecstatic visions, avatars of what she considered a divine singularity . . . Bursts of color, yes, but more: floating clusters of energies that suggest vibrations on a higher spiritual plane." That's not the language critics use for a painter repeating a formula. Hans Hofmann, asked directly about his own reputation for shifting styles, rejected the premise outright: "People say 'Hofmann has different styles.' I have not. I have different moods; I am not two days the same man." Willem de Kooning built an entire working philosophy around the same idea, distilled into five words: "You have to change to stay the same." Pablo Picasso described it as a lifetime project rather than a stylistic choice: "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." The philosopher Heraclitus made the same argument twenty-five centuries earlier, about rivers rather than paintings: "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." And Ralph Waldo Emerson gave the whole idea its sharpest one-line defense: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

What This Means Before You Collect Or Commission A Living Painter

My own practice runs across three distinct series — Astral Thicket, built from walnut stain boiled from my own yard and layered oil and wax pigments; Painterly Originals, the working core of the studio, scraped back and reworked over weeks; and Large Scale, painted in the round, composed to be read standing in front of it after being made standing above it. Twenty years, one practice, several different wells of influence, the same way Isham's six decades ran through Berlin, Washington, Hong Kong, and her own studio. Range across a career isn't scattered — it's usually what twenty-plus years of real, working practice actually looks like once a painter stops repeating the same painting to satisfy a buyer's expectation of "a look."

Browse the current paintings available now across all three series, or start a conversation about a commission built around your own room and your own color story.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does an abstract painter need one consistent style to be taken seriously as a collector-grade artist?
No. Curators and gallerists increasingly treat a painter's range across decades — different influences, different materials, different series — as evidence of a serious, evolving practice rather than a lack of focus.

How do I evaluate a living painter's range when I'm considering a commission or purchase?
Look at the body of work across years, not a single series. A painter working seriously across several wells of influence usually shows a consistent hand and process underneath the visible variety.

What is "Sheila Isham: Between Worlds" and why does it matter to collectors?
It's a Hollis Taggart / Newport Art Museum retrospective (July 11, 2026–February 28, 2027) tracing painter Sheila Isham's six-decade career across Berlin, Washington, and Hong Kong — a real, current example of range being read as depth, not scatter.

Does Angela Simeone paint in more than one series or style?
Yes — Astral Thicket, Painterly Originals, and Large Scale are three distinct series built from different processes and materials, developed across a twenty-year practice.

Visit angelasimeone.com to see current work, or reach the studio directly at angela@angelasimeone.com.

Sources: Newport Art Museum, "Sheila Isham: Between Worlds" exhibition page, 2026 (newportartmuseum.org/exhibitions/sheila-isham-between-worlds); Motif Magazine, "Between Worlds with Sheila Isham," Sean Carlson, June 23, 2026 (Danielle Ogden and Hollis Taggart quotes); What's Up Newp, "Newport Art Museum to Honor Sheila Isham and Celebrate Angel Otero at 2026 Summer Art Party," Ryan Belmore, June 16, 2026 (Harry Philbrick quote); Hollis Taggart, "Remembering Sheila Isham (1927–2024)" (Patricia Lewy quote); Hans Hofmann, widely documented statement cited in ArtNews (Andrew Russeth, 2020); Willem de Kooning, quoted in Jack Cowart, "De Kooning Today," Art International, Summer 1979, and the Willem de Kooning Foundation; Pablo Picasso, widely documented statement; Heraclitus, widely documented fragment via Plato's Cratylus; Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance," 1841. NOTE — tastemaker quote bank ran 4/5 this post (Hollis Taggart, Danielle Ogden, Harry Philbrick, Patricia Lewy); no additional named current gallerist/curator/advisor quote specifically on the "range across decades" theme was found within this run's search budget. Flagged rather than padded.