“Sanctuary” Exhibition featuring William Nichols and Sara Gallagher

CK Contemporary will be hosting an opening reception for “Sanctuary” on Saturday, October 17th from 5-8pm. Refreshments will be served and both artists will be in attendance. The show will continue to run through November 14th.

“Sanctuary” brings together the large-scale landscape paintings of William Nichols and the emotionally charged pencil drawings of Sara Gallagher in an exhibition exploring nature as a site of refuge, restoration, and human connection.

For more than five decades, Nichols has approached the landscape not simply as a subject to be represented and admired, but as an experience to be entered. Working from observation and often prioritizing a more raw version of nature, he creates immersive images in which dense foliage, shifting light, and gestural surfaces replace the traditional distance of the landscape view. Horizons disappear, contextual clues recede, and the viewer is drawn into an intimate world that feels like a portal to another place. His paintings occupy a compelling space between realism and abstraction, inviting us to feel the presence of nature rather than merely look at it.

Complementing Nichols’s expansive, enveloping landscapes, Sara Gallagher’s drawings turn inward. Through her distinctive practice of “emotional realism,” Gallagher gives visible form to the psychological and bodily experience of seeking comfort in the natural world. Her soft, meticulously rendered, and sometimes surreal figures personify emotions that are often difficult to articulate, creating space for vulnerability, recognition, and healing.

Together, these artists propose nature as more than a backdrop. It becomes an active participant in the human experience. Nichols immerses us in the physical density of the landscape; Gallagher reveals the inner states that such immersion can awaken. Their works meet at the threshold between external environment and internal feeling. “Sanctuary” invites viewers to slow down, attend to the world around them, and consider how encounters with nature can help us reconnect—with ourselves, with one another, and with the possibility of healing.