“Nature, Remembered”
An Exhibition of works by Martha Mans, Katey Berry and Cynthia Young
SANTA FE, NM — Owen Contemporary is pleased to present Nature, Remembered, a three-person exhibition exploring landscape as a site of memory, emotion, and belonging. Bringing together the work of painter Martha Mans, artist Katey Berry, and painter Cynthia Young, the exhibition reflects on the enduring relationship between humans and the natural world and how it shapes us, holds us, and remains within us long after we leave it behind.
Across painting and mixed media, Nature, Remembered considers the landscape not as a fixed image, but as something felt and carried, an ever shifting interplay of perception and memory. The works on view move between observation and abstraction, between grounded materiality and fleeting atmosphere, inviting viewers to encounter the land as both presence and echo. Each artist approaches nature as a living archive, rich with gesture, texture, and resonance, offering a deeply personal interpretation of place.
Among the featured artists is Martha Mans, an established painter known for her intuitive and energetic approach to the landscape. Mans creates with a sense of wild abandon, building surfaces that pulse with movement and vitality. Her work captures the lively and shifting patterns found in nature, the flicker of light through leaves, the rhythm of wind across terrain, translating them into bold and layered compositions. Through gestural mark making and a fearless use of color, Mans evokes not just what the land looks like, but how it feels, immediate, dynamic, and alive.
In contrast, Katey Berry offers a quieter and deeply tactile engagement with the natural world. Drawing daily inspiration from the earth, Berry creates intricate works using beeswax and thread, materials that speak to both fragility and endurance. Her process is meditative and deliberate, embedding time and care into each piece. The resulting works feel grounded and intimate, carrying traces of the landscapes that inspired them. They are small acts of devotion that honor the subtle, sustaining beauty of the natural environment.
Rounding out the exhibition is Cynthia Young, whose atmospheric paintings invite viewers into spaces of ambiguity and quiet mystery. Young’s landscapes are less about specific locations and more about the emotional terrain of being within them. Through softened edges, layered tones, and a careful orchestration of light, her work creates immersive environments that seem to hover between presence and disappearance. There is a sense of stillness in her paintings, a gentle pull inward, as though the land itself is holding something just beyond reach.
Together, these three artists create a compelling dialogue about the ways we experience and remember the natural world. Nature, Remembered suggests that landscapes are not merely external vistas, but deeply internalized spaces, held in the body, shaped by time, and revisited through memory. The exhibition invites viewers to slow down, to look closely, and to consider their own relationship to the land, what is remembered, what is lost, and what continues to endure.