NEW YORK, NY.- Nohra Haime Gallery is presenting Elemental Ascendant, a Spring exhibition revisiting paintings by Valerie Hird, on view from April 10 through May 2 in New York.

Hird’s compositions unfold as perceptual fields unfolding with rhythmic and subtle variations. Undulating bands of color and translucent veils evoke the simultaneity of oceanic movement and atmospheric drift, collapsing distinctions between above and below. Instead of a fixed horizon, Hird constructs environments in flux, in a constant state of transformation.

A recurring strand of birds, depicted in profile and embedded within yin/yang configurations, delineate the edges of several paintings. Functioning as both a formal device and a symbolic threshold, this motif articulates a space for passage between elemental realms. The birds operate as intermediaries, reinforcing her central theme: that continuity, sustained through transition and balance, emerges through dynamic interrelation.

Through this body of work, Hird develops a personal cosmology grounded in equilibrium. It resists narrative resolution. Instead, it invites contemplative engagement, where the paintings operate less as representations and more as spaces through which the viewer may discover an interconnectedness.

In her series Origination, the four elements establish a foundational vocabulary within Hird’s broader practice, one that extends into her later explorations of sculptural book forms and the moving image. Across mediums, her work remains committed to articulating the invisible structures that shape experience, bridging the material and the immaterial, the observed and the intuited.

Valerie Hird (b. 1954, Massachusetts) lives and works in Vermont. She has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and internationally. She is the recipient of awards from the Community Foundation of Vermont, the Puffin Foundation and The Arts Council. Hird is currently developing a hand-drawn animated film, set to premiere at the Bennington Museum in April 2027.