Ron Isaacs “Human / Nature” at Gravers Lane Gallery

Ron Isaacs brings “Human / Nature” to Gravers Lane Gallery in Chestnut Hill for a solo exhibition running May 21 through July 11, 2026, with First Friday receptions on June 5 and July 3 from 5 to 8 p.m. and artist talks at 6:30 p.m. This is the first solo show at Gravers Lane for Ron Isaacs and a long-overdue introduction to a Kentucky-based artist whose career spans more than 50 years of building three-dimensional relief sculptures from Finnish birch plywood — each element carved, sanded, and pieced together with painstaking care, then painted in trompe l’oeil fashion with a restrained palette of sage green, Payne’s gray, and periwinkle.

Ron Isaacs, the Artist

Ron Isaacs was born in Cincinnati and grew up in rural Eastern Kentucky. He studied art at Berea College before earning his MFA in painting at Indiana University. He taught painting and drawing at Eastern Kentucky University for more than 30 years, developing his unique fusion of painting with sculpture over the course of that career.

His work has been exhibited at the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian, the Kohler Arts Center, the Denver Art Museum, the National Museum of American Art, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Fuller Craft Museum, the Southern Ohio Museum, and the Columbus Museum of Art. Collections holding his work include the Racine Art Museum — the largest public collection — the Kohler Arts Center, the Huntsville Museum of Art, the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, American Express, Chase Manhattan Bank, and AT&T. He now lives and works in Lexington, Kentucky.

The Process and Vision of Ron Isaacs

Ron Isaacs builds elaborate relief constructions from Finnish birch plywood and paints them to take on the outward appearance of materials they are not — vintage garments, plant forms, found objects — creating a tension between what the eye registers and what the hand would discover. His three primary recurring subjects are vintage clothing, which he uses for the way it continues the life of the past into the present and for its anthropomorphic presence as a stand-in for the human figure; plant materials in the form of sticks, leaves, and flowers; and found objects. These elements combine in juxtapositions that function as visual poems and, at their best, carry genuine psychological resonance.

Ron Isaacs has described the basic impulse behind his work as a fascination with the old, simple idea of resemblance — the very first idea of art after tools and shelter — where an object made of one material can take on the outward appearance and therefore some of the reality of another. By using objects such as garments, tools, and organic materials, he explores the narrative of objects and their relation to mortality, memory, and the passage of time. The trompe l’oeil painting technique is not a gimmick in his hands. It is the mechanism through which carved plywood becomes fabric, wood becomes petal, and a constructed surface becomes a window into how objects accumulate meaning over decades.

Gravers Lane Gallery and the Context for Ron Isaacs

“Human / Nature” will be on view in Gravers Lane Gallery’s primary exhibition space, paired with their rotating collection of contemporary craft objects, wall work, art jewelry, and fine jewelry. A few ceramic objects from master trompe l’oeil sculptor Eric Serritella will also be on view in advance of his solo show at Gravers Lane in October.

The placement of Ron Isaacs in this context — alongside makers who share his commitment to material mastery and slow, deliberate creation — positions the exhibition as exactly the kind of show that rewards viewers who look past the surface.