The Chazan Gallery at Wheeler is pleased to present Everyday Wonder, a two-person exhibition featuring the work of Maria Napolitano and Karen Roarke from October 15 - November 4, 2026. 

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Maria Napolitano and Karen Roarke share a deep engagement with the natural world as both subject and catalyst for artistic exploration. Drawing inspiration from their daily encounters with Rhode Island’s landscapes - Napolitano through her walks in Roger Williams Park and Roarke through the shifting coastal environment of Aquidneck Island - both artists are attentive observers of change, light, atmosphere, and the passage of time.

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For the past five years, Maria Napolitano’s work has been inspired and guided by her regular morning walks in Roger Williams Park, an extraordinary green space set in the inner city of Providence. This daily routine gives Napolitano the chance to immerse herself in nature while observing the changes that occur over time. Noticing how plants, animals, birds and humans intersect brings to light the fragile connection we have with the natural world. Back in her studio, experimental and painterly processes mix with memory and imagination to transform her visual and emotional experiences.

 

Maria Napolitano lives and works in Providence, RI. She was awarded the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Make Art Grant in 2024, a Fellowship Grant in Drawing in 2011 and a Fellowship Grant in Painting in 2004 and 1981. In 2013, Maria was the recipient of a painting grant from The Artist Resource Trust of the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. In 2012 she received The Lillian Orlowsky and William Freed Grant in Painting from the Provincetown Art Museum. She received a M.F.A. in Painting from Syracuse University and a B.F.A. in Painting from UMass Dartmouth.

Her work has been exhibited at numerous organizations and institutions, including the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, the RISD Museum, and the Chazan Gallery at Wheeler in Providence, Rhode Island. Her work has also been shown at the Painting Center in New York City, the University Gallery at UMass Lowell, the Grimshaw-Gudewicz Gallery at Bristol Community College in Fall River, Massachusetts, and the Fitchburg Art Museum. She is represented in the permanent collections of the RISD Museum and Fidelity Investments, as well as in the homes of numerous private art lovers. 

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Karen Roarke’s studio is on the western side of the hill between Easton’s & Sachuest beaches in Middletown, Rhode Island. As was the case with the artists colloquially known as Luminists who came to paint the fantastic light here in southern Aquidneck Island, Roarke is drawn to the palette present in the ever changing coastal landscape. In recent years, light and luminosity have often been her subjects.
Roarke takes hues, composition, light and shadow from her surroundings using these elements of landscape as starting points for exploration. Instead of representing or illustrating a depiction of a scene, she is interested in distilling the visual properties that enamor her: light, color, the sky’s palette of ephemeral gradations, negative shapes, line and patterns found in vegetation and shadows; how everything outdoors or coming through windows is always shifting. Roarke has always been interested in the process of painting  abstractly. By mark making, layering, obscuring, removing and revealing, she uses acrylics to create surfaces exploring figure and ground, fluidity, pattern, transparency and opacity. Whatever image or idea forms the structural springboard, her aim is to create an aesthetically engaging non-representational painting.

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Karen Roarke grew up in Cranston, Rhode Island. After graduating from Boston College in 1984 where she majored in Studio Art, Karen moved to the beaches of Southern California. In 1988 she earned a Master of Art degree in Drawing & Painting from California State University, Fullerton. Continuing her studies at The Claremont Graduate University, Roarke received the Emily Ann Horowitz Fellowship and was awarded a Master of Fine Art degree in January 1990. In 1994 she moved from downtown Los Angeles to New York City and three years later settled near the ocean in Middletown, Rhode Island.

Roarke taught visual arts and served as Director of the Hunter Gallery at St. George's School from 2013-2019. In addition to working in her Middletown studio, Karen is a scenic artist often employed in motion pictures and television. An active member of the Newport Artists’ Collective, Roarke also serves on the board of directors for Overlap Art Space, a newly formed non-profit exhibition space in Newport, RI. Roarke was recently awarded a Make Art Grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (FY’27). Exhibited locally and internationally for over 30 years, her work is included in the collections of Fidelity Investments, Nestlé Corporation, KVH Industries and Tokai Bank and in numerous private collections.