Salmon and Coffee: Opening Reception

About this event

In Bed, Oil, oil pastel, oil stick, graphite on canvas, 46.5 x 63 inches, 2026

About the Exhibition:

John Taylor Wagner presents Salmon and Coffee, eleven paintings and four drawings, spanning 2025 and 2026, that follow impulse. Each began as a flash in his mind, caught and set down on graphic with paper unplanned. Wagner plays with color, negative space, and the angles that steer the eye: where it lands, what pulls it in, what nudges it away, and where it is held in place. The artist’s hand is a device to explore human emotion, and each painting becomes what it uncovers.

Amid a celebratory palette looms a quiet notion of dissociative discomfort. The figures’ feelings are at capacity, while their emotions remain unexplained. Life wobbles and suspense hangs in the balance; even the figures don’t know what they will feel next or what they might do in response. One figure’s blind eye is another’s wry wink.

Consider this an invitation in, to lead with the senses, not the mind.