quiet steps | LOUD THOUGHTS
PAMELA WALSH GALLERY
540 Ramona St. . Palo Alto . CA
March 15 - April 19, 2025
A two-person exhibtion featuring Bay Area painter Fernando Reyes and Southern California cermaic artist Emily Rose Casares. The exhibition’s title, quiet steps | LOUD THOUGHTS, speaks to the interplay between introspection and expression, contemplation and assertion. Though separated by nearly two generations, Reyes and his niece Casares share a profound artistic kinship—one shaped by a deep engagement with the figure, a reverence for nature, and an unyielding search for self-understanding. Their works embody the subtle, unspoken moments of reflection that give rise to bold, declarative artistic gestures.
For Fernando Reyes, quiet steps manifest in the solitary act of walking—through landscapes, memory, and personal evolution. His paintings, informed by these moments of quiet observation, capture the kinetic energy of the body in motion. Broad, gestural strokes build dynamic compositions where figures emerge fluidly, as if caught between movement and stillness. Yet within these rhythmic, meditative spaces, Reyes’ figures stand as loud thoughts—exuberant, assertive, and undeniably present, their vibrant forms disrupting the canvas with a palpable sense of life.
For Emily Rose Casares, quiet steps are embedded in the tactile intimacy of working with clay—a practice of patience, repetition, and intuitive discovery. Her sculptural portraits, molded by hand, give physical form to loud thoughts—emotional landscapes of resilience, vulnerability, and transformation. In each piece, Casares captures the tension between fragility and strength, the rawness of clay echoing the complexity of human experience. Her figures, though grounded in stillness, possess an inner force, a quiet insistence that speaks volumes.
Despite their distinct mediums, Reyes and Casares engage in a shared visual language—one rooted in the human form, the expressive potential of color and texture, and the nuanced dialogue between external and internal worlds. Their works exist at the convergence of movement and introspection, evoking pathways both literal and psychological: Reyes’ inspired by the trails and foothills he traverses, Casares’ charting an inner terrain of self-discovery.
