Ceres Gallery presents Outside My Oeuvre, a works on paper group exhibition. This show of more than twenty-five artists was conceived in response to their need to exhibit work that was created in unexpected ways, in unexpected places, using unexpected materials or sources, or whose creation was preparatory, whimsical, fanciful, impulsive, playful or in response to outside circumstances or events. In 2020, activities in physical spaces were greatly curtailed; socializing was restricted and human contact often only virtual. This presented both challenges and opportunities to many of our artists. Some of the work in this exhibition can be seen as a response to difficult times and ultimately produced work that, in some cases, surprised even the artist herself.

There are pieces in Outside My Oeuvre made as part of a path to the artists’ major work; some is work that arose from seeing and being inspired by exhibitions in galleries or museums and yet other work seems to have been created on a lark. Many of the participating artists have contributed works on paper even though their dominant medium is sculpture or painting. In some cases this work was approached in a non-serious manner and in other cases as a necessary part of the artists’ development. 

Moreover, much of the work, though strong, may never have been shown at all because it would have been extraneous to the artists’ solo exhibition. Although there was a wide range of how and why these works were produced, taken together, the more than fifty pieces make up a delightful and exhilarating, sometimes magical, visual experience and the defining requirement of difference, ironically, produced a cohesive and edifying exhibition.