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"Truly Grateful" by Beverly McIver (American) - Oil on canvas / 2011 - North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh) #WomenInArt #BeverlyMcIver #McIver #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #NorthCarolinaMuseumofArt #art #ArtText #BlueskyArt #SelfPortrait #gratitude #BlackArt #ContemporaryArt #BlackArtists
Painted in 2011, this self-portrait comes after years in which American artist Beverly McIver navigated profound loss and new responsibility following her mother’s death and her promise to care for her sister Renee, who has a developmental disability. In earlier works, Beverly often centered her mother and sister, but here she turns the gaze gently onto herself, capturing a moment of hard-won calm. She depicts herself as a mature Black woman from the shoulders up, set low in the frame against a flat orange-gold background. Her short black natural hair forms an uneven halo of dark curls, painted in thick strokes. She bows her head and lowers her eyes, so we see mostly the planes of her forehead, nose, and cheeks, modeled in patches of browns, gold, green, and rose. Her full lips, a deep brick red, press gently together. A light blue scarf wraps around her neck and spills to the right, its rough brushmarks suggesting soft folds of fabric. She wears a dark coat over a pale top. Soft, diffuse light creates gentle shifts of color that register emotion more than strict anatomy. The warm background recalls religious icons with gold tones, suggesting a quiet, almost devotional gratitude. Thick, expressive strokes refuse to smooth away age, fatigue, or complex feeling, aligning with McIver’s belief that “all of my portraits are self-portraits” and should tell the truth about a life. Created when she was an acclaimed North Carolina artist and teacher, "Truly Grateful" honors the resilience of a Black woman who has come through grief and caregiving and can finally pause, eyes closed, to acknowledge that ... despite everything ... life is still good.
November 25, 2025 at 9:13 PM
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“Girlfriends” by Jiab Prachakul (Thai) - Acrylic on linen / 2022 - North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh, North Carolina) #WomenInArt #JiabPrachakul #Prachakul #NCMA #NorthCarolinaMuseumofArt #art #artText #arte #ThaiArt #ThaiArtist #AsianArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #WomenPaintingWomen
Thai artist Jiab Prachakul is a compelling figurative painter because she makes quiet moments feel cinematic without turning them into melodrama. Born in Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, trained first in film, and self-taught as a painter, she often builds paintings from memory, photographs, friendship, and the emotional weather of diasporic life. This scene grew from time spent in Sauzon, Belle-Île-en-Mer, and its mood is about the charged space between people who know each other well. In bright coastal daylight, two women crouch on a pale quay beside still blue water. The woman at left turns away from us, her short dark bob and clear glasses outlined against the sky. She wears a loose white top and white trousers with dark socks and heavy black boots, her posture compact and inward. At right, a second woman in a sheer black top and dark cropped trousers crouches on the balls of her feet, also in sturdy black boots. Her blunt fringe and lightened hair ends catch the sun. Hoop earrings and sharply modeled cheekbones add to her alert, stylish presence. Between them, her hands extend forward and folding over one another. To their left are two wine glasses. A small boat drifts at left, while a lighthouse sits at the end of a long breakwater. Gold sparks of reflected sunlight skip across the water as the women’s shadows stretch behind them. The title promises easy intimacy, but the painting gives something subtler: companionship with room for privacy, glamour edged with thoughtfulness, and closeness that does not erase individuality. Prachakul’s attention to clothing, pose, and gesture makes identity feel lived rather than symbolic. The lighthouse and harbor suggest navigation, pause, and emotional bearings. This work also expands who inhabits contemporary painting with elegance, sensitivity, and psychological depth. It is not just a picture of two stylish women by the sea. It is a study in how relationships can be tender, self-possessed, and slightly mysterious all at once.
April 5, 2026 at 5:11 PM
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“The Garden Parasol” by Frederick Carl Frieseke (American) - Oil on canvas / 1910 - North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh, North Carolina) #WomenInArt #FrederickCarlFrieseke #Frieseke #NorthCarolinaMuseumOfArt #art #artText #arte #garden #FrenchArt #AmericanArtist #AmericanImpressionism #1910sArt
Painted when American artist Frederick Carl Frieseke was working in France as part of the Giverny circle near Claude Monet, this canvas turns a quiet domestic moment into a study of atmosphere, elegance, and modern leisure. Rather than building drama through action, Frieseke lets color do the storytelling so a giant blazing Japanese parasol becomes the emotional center of the picture, transforming an ordinary garden visit into a radiant performance of light. The large sunlit parasol reflects the era’s fascination with Japanese design, or Japonisme, which shaped European and American painting alike. It fills the upper left of the painting like a glowing flower, its orange, cream, and soft red tones filtering light across a garden tea table and pale green chairs. Beneath it, a seated woman in a loose white dress leans back with an open book resting in her hands. Her dark hair is pinned up, and her face turns outward toward us, as though she has just looked up from reading. Behind her stands a second woman in a light dress with pink stripes and a broad hat trimmed in dark ribbon. She holds a folded parasol and seems poised between arriving and waiting. Around them, the garden shimmers in dappled greens, yellows, and blue-shadowed patches of sun. The brushwork is broken and flickering, so that foliage, grass, fabric, and light seem to vibrate together. The seated woman is generally identified as Frieseke’s wife, Sadie, in the garden at the couple’s home in Giverny. Sadie appears not as a laboring hostess but as a cultivated reader at ease outdoors, an image tied to early-20th-century ideals of refinement, privilege, and feminine modernity. At the same time, the standing companion introduces a slight social tension making me wonder if someone has just arrived or are we the interruption? Frieseke leaves that question open, allowing sunlight, pattern, and color to upstage narrative and carry the real pleasure of the scene.
April 15, 2026 at 3:39 PM
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“Kawliya 1” by Hayv Kahraman (Iraqi) - Oil on linen / 2014 - North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh) #WomenInArt #art #WomanArtist #artwork #FemaleArtist #ArtText #WomensArt #IraqiArtist #HayvKahraman #Kahraman #dance #WomenArtists #OilPainting #WomenPaintingWomen #Dancer #NorthCarolinaMuseumofArt
Iraqi artist Hayv Kahraman’s memories and experiences as a Middle Eastern woman inform her paintings which focus on the female body and its political and social significance. Born in Baghdad in 1981, her family fled Iraq during the Gulf War and found refuge in Sweden, where she grew up and learned to paint. Kahraman moved to Florence, Italy to study graphic design and now lives in the USA. Kawliya is a traditional Iraqi dance that originated with the nomadic people of the same name, known throughout the Middle East for their talents in music and dance. Having experienced this dance as a girl, Kahraman has long celebrated this memory as a touchstone to her childhood. The artwork presents a stylized slender woman whose pose is elegant yet slightly off-balance, one arm pointing upwards, the other hand on her long dark flowing hair. Her skin is pale with soft facial features while her elongated neck and limbs have fluidity. The dancer’s collage-like top is a yellow bodice with a repeating geometric pattern of small, stylized quatrefoils. Her skirt is light teal, decorated with an equally intricate Persian-inspired pattern. An understated simple beige background allows the woman and her dress to be our focus. Due to her worldwide movement and displacement, a variety of artistic influences can be seen in her work: Japanese scrolls, Mannerist masterpieces, Persian illustrations, Arabic calligraphy, and Islamic mosaics. In the artist’s words, “When I went [back] to Iraq, I felt like a tourist. In Sweden, I’m a tourist and here [in the USA] I am definitely a tourist. The merging of cultures in my art is a search for identity. I’ve never had a home.” The females in Kahraman’s work are based on photographs the artist takes of herself. “I use my body as the primary tool,” she notes. Each woman in her work has a similar appearance—fleshy and graceful, with striking features, almost translucent skin, and elegant stances, all with a serene yet distant look on their face.
July 12, 2025 at 7:58 PM
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“Dance of the Elements, Bali” by Maurice Sterne (American, born Latvia) - Oil on canvas / 1913 - North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh, North Carolina) #WomenInArt #MauriceSterne #Sterne #arttext #art #BlueskyArt #DanceArt #dance #artwork #NorthCarolinaMuseumOfArt #NCArtMuseum #BalineseArt #1910sArt
Painted in 1913, this work is one of Latvian-born American artist Maurice Sterne’s major Bali paintings and one of the largest from his time on the island. Rather than isolating a single heroine, Sterne presents women as the visible force of ritual life: moving together, sustaining rhythm, and activating sacred space. At the center of this large nighttime scene, a circle of women moves in ritual dance. Their brown skin glows against deep blues, greens, and smoky violets, while white cloth wraps flash at the waist and hips. Several dancers raise their arms in curved, rhythmic gestures as others kneel or lean inward, making the whole composition feel tidal and musical. Faces are simplified rather than individualized, so the painting conveys communal movement, ceremony, and atmosphere. Sterne fills the surface with flickering brushwork and shifting patches of light, giving the dancers, trees, temple structures, and night air a vibrating, almost spiritual energy. The scene feels both observed and transformed like part performance, part memory, and part emotional response to Bali. The title suggests more than literal dance. “Elements” can be read as firelight, earth, air, night, sound, and body joining in one ceremonial event. That makes the painting less a straightforward document than an attempt to convey lived intensity like heat, motion, devotion, and collective presence. At the same time, it reflects an early 20th-century Western artist’s encounter with Bali, so it carries both admiration and distance. What remains powerful is its sense of shared energy with women not posed for passive viewing, but acting, circling, and transforming the space around them. The painting turns ceremony into atmosphere … and atmosphere into meaning.
March 29, 2026 at 3:30 PM
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Paintings inspired by poems..READ THE PREVIEW
#NorthCarolinaMuseumofArt #PictureThisPostart #art #ResearchTriangleArt #ResearchTriangleMuseums #PictureThisPostMuseums #GraceHartigan #poetry #painting #DaisyAlden #BarbaraGuest #JamesSchuyler #JamesMerrill #FrankOHara #NCArt #RaleighMuseums
North Carolina Museum of Art Presents "Grace Hartigan: The Gift of Attention" — Preview
WHEN: April 12 - August 10, 2025 WHERE: North Carolina Museum of Art 2110 Blue Ridge Road Raleigh, NC 27607 TICKETS: $20+ For more information an
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March 31, 2025 at 6:36 PM
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Now in it's 25th year-- two premier cultural organizations in North Carolina celebrate Black History Month with a celebration of African American culture-- Click the link to read the preview in the PIcture This Post Research Triangle Edition-

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North Carolina Museum of History and North Carolina Museum of Art Presents North Carolina’s African American Cultural Celebration - Preview
A spokesperson says--- “...North Carolina’s premier kickoff to Black History Month. Performers, artists, educators, and community members come together for
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January 17, 2026 at 8:05 PM
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An exhibit that delves into the making of Queen Esther as a superstar heroine-- in Dutch culture circa 17th Century-- Click the image to read the Picture This Post preview--

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North Carolina Museum of Art Presents “The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt” - Preview
WHEN: Sept. 20, 2025 - March 8, 2026 WHERE: North Carolina Museum of Art East Building, Level B Meymandi Exhibition Gallery 2110 Blue Ridge Road Raleigh,
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August 21, 2025 at 9:25 PM
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Oh goodness, #Raleigh friends, how am I just now finding out about this. I must see it. MUST. Glorious works. #ncma #northcarolinamuseumofart #art
ncartmuseum.org/the-time-is-...
The Time Is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure
Tickets Exhibition ticket includes admission to both The Time Is Always Now and Grace Hartigan (opening April 12) Free for Members $20 Adults, $17 Seniors age 65 and older, $12 Students (ages 7–22)…
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April 3, 2025 at 8:23 AM
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#BunnyRules
Please be nice to the 🐰
Treat them like real 🐰
You are welcome to gently pet and hug 🤗 🐰
Please don't hit,jump,roll,or crawl over or under 🐰
#NorthCarolinaMuseumofArt
#outdoorartexhibit
#museumpark
May I add, PLEASE be nice to all humans.
outdoor Museum exhibit of Blown up white Bunnies 🐰 and people walking around them at night.
April 19, 2025 at 11:00 AM