Hamptons Fine Art Fair

Harsh Collective presents Day and Night, a duo exhibition featuring Thérèse Mulgrew and Mary Royall Wilgis at the Hamptons Fine Art Fair, on view July 9–12.

The booth moves from morning to midnight. Wilgis's South Elliot Place, 9:59 am, (2026) dissolves a tree canopy into pools of peach, cream, and pale yellow, dappled light so precisely observed it almost moves. Mulgrew's Night Float (2025) puts you poolside after dark: a woman suspended in mosaic-tiled water, martini raised, cigarette in hand, her body refracted into copper and flame. The two works anchor a presentation that traces the full sensory arc of a summer day.

Wilgis's practice begins outside. Her process, which she calls "light foraging," involves laying canvas down outdoors to record shadows as they fall, then returning to the studio to build thin layers of oil over hand-cut translucent mesh. The finished paintings continue to respond to ambient light, shifting depending on where they hang and when you're looking. Her titles mark the moment: a specific address, a specific time.

Mulgrew composes from the other direction, staging her scenes with cinematic precision. Water, smoke, grapes, brass, glass: the textures of a good night rendered with hyperrealist exactness. Her paintings don't document pleasure; they recreate the feeling of being inside it.

"Mary paints a fleeting moment so ephemeral you can barely hold it. Thérèse paints a scene you don't want to leave. Putting them together is about vastly different styles that come together as seamlessly as day turns into night,” says Etta Harshaw, Founder of Harsh Collective.