WONDER.
October 24-November 28, 2026
A/R (Addison/Ripley Fine Art) welcomes Carlotta Hester back to the gallery for an exhibition of more than 40 examples of her recent work. “Wonder” is an apt title for this body of work: works that are chromatically transcendent and imbued with intense creative passion. Hester is a Washington, DC based artist whose work transits between layered, materially rich paintings and those composed of, among other materials, translucent washes, gestures, artifacts and traces. Recurring themes of nature, memory, heroic cycles are readily apparent. The relationship between the artist’s inner and outer worlds emerge on multiple levels.
“My artistic process begins with looking and seeing, exploring and experimenting. I become fully absorbed, allowing one mark, material, or gesture to suggest the next. Making art is a form of discovery—a place for intuition, covering and uncovering, building up and taking apart. In that space, I experience wonder : the sense that something unexpected can come into being.”
Hester’s touch varies from the most gossamer, in paintings like “Together” and “Rising” to the barely controlled chaos of “my little bird (passing through)”.The artist seems to intuit the crucial balance between “just enough” and excessively overworking her surfaces. From paintings that suggest morning dew to those that have the complexity and natural layering of the forest floor, the artist seems to simultaneously channel an awe of nature with a fascination with epic storytelling.
“At the heart of my work are relationships: between materials, surfaces, and one piece and another. Wonder lives somewhere between intention and accident, the known and unknown, the seen and unseen—in following rather than knowing, and in staying open to what might appear.”
The accumulation of surface layers, some light and airy, others physically dense and textured are deftly orchestrated to bring the works in “Wonder” into bright, sharp focus. A swirl of myth and pentimento on large and small surfaces. A flurry of artistic expertise revealing a vibrant, unseen world.
In addition, ravens in many forms, preside over and are embedded in this collection of work. The artist has unearthed a perfect spirit companion in the raven. Although most commonly a metaphor for death, doom and grief, Hester saturates her familiar with the bird’s more positive aspects of intelligence and mystical transformation.
"He painted until his cursive brushes were only whispers of rawness on the thin ivory. Only the walls and the ravens that watched knew the boy with the paint-stained palms weated his art onto his sketchpad on the park bench at lunchtimes and only the trees whispered it like a prayer."
Hester has exhibited widely, with over a dozen one-person exhibitions. She has also exhibited her work internationally with major exhibitions in museums in Dublin and Havana. In 2020, The Pure Drop, a book of her drawings of traditional Irish musicians, was published with a foreword by Alice McDermott. Hester has been a highly regarded teacher at the Maret School in Washington, DC for over three decades.
A/R
In 2025 A/R expanded its footprint, unlocking spaces the building had not utilized in years — partnering with StudioLab RD to bring their working studio into that previously idle lower level — and reworked the lighting throughout, so the rooms read differently than they did as Addison/Ripley. That lighting isn't just for daytime visitors, either: the gallery is deliberately organized and lit so it keeps giving after hours, too — walk or drive past the Corner at night and the windows are doing real work, turning A/R into something you can experience without ever stepping inside.
Underneath A/R's recent digital emphasis is a very deliberate bet on the physical: in a moment when so much art discovery happens on a screen — and D.C.'s gallery scene keeps thinning out — A/R is leaning hard into being one of the last true bricks-and-mortar galleries left in the city. Fewer galleries means more focus on the ones that remain, and A/R is treating that as an opportunity rather than a threat.
The roster reflects that same openness: unknown, little known, and well known artists share wall space on equal footing — a first-time discovery hanging a room away from a marquee name. That's not incidental to the space, either — it's the whole reason the studio-to-gallery pipeline matters to Addison personally. "Mounting a new show never gets old," he says. "Taking the work from studio to gallery walls brings it alive in new, previously unimagined ways" — and with StudioLab RD now working in the building itself, that transformation happens close enough to watch.
Artists like Robin Bell, Matt Curry, and Jonathan Monaghan are bringing the digital art world into sharp focus at A/R, and the gallery backs that work with real infrastructure: FAL (Fine Art Ledger) tags, attached to the back of each work, offer surety, easily accessible information, and durable provenance — traditional pieces included, lending them the same credence as the screen-based ones beside them.
That's the real trick of the redesign: it doesn't ask you to choose between the two things a gallery used to have to sacrifice one for the other to offer — the warmth of standing in a room with real work, and the confidence of knowing exactly what you're looking at. A/R keeps both. Walk in during a show and you're watching art come alive in real time; walk by at midnight and the Corner is still lit for you. Either way, in a city with fewer and fewer galleries doing this, A/R made sure it's the one worth stopping for — committed to augmenting the collector experience and building a stronger art community, one show at a time.
Featured Artists
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