Emergent Light

Lisa Petker-Mintz will be displaying her large-scale mixed media paintings in the intimate Thomas Lovely Gallery located in the Swirbul Library.

• On View: June 2–August 2, 2026
• Reception: Wednesday, June 3, from 4:30–6:30pm
• Artist Talk: Wednesday, June 3, from 5:00pm

This exhibit is made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and administered by Long Island Arts Alliance.

Lisa Petker Mintz, Reflections 4, 2026. Acrylic and medium on board, 48 × 48 inches

Learn more about Adelphi Art Exhibitions. The Performing Arts Center Gallery is open daily from 9:00am to 9:00pm. Follow us on Instagram @AUExhibitions.

For more information, please contact Eliz Alahverdian at alahverdian@adelphi.edu.

About the Artist

Lisa Petker Mintz is a graduate of Parsons School of Design whose work has been exhibited widely throughout the East Coast, with recent expansion to Texas. Her solo exhibition Impulse and Improv at The Painting Center in Chelsea marked a significant evolution in her work, followed by Repetition and Ritual at Hood College Gallery, which further explored rhythm, accumulation, and embodied mark-making.

She has exhibited at Islip Art Museum alongside artists including Helen Frankenthaler and Elizabeth Murray and has received multiple grants, including a $10,000 award from the New York State Council on the Arts and the Creative Individual Grant from the Huntington Arts Council. Her work was recently featured among the Top 4 highlighted works in Curators’ Picks: Women-Led Galleries Now on Artsy.

Petker Mintz was commissioned by NYU Langone Health to create seven paintings for the Spatz Postpartum Unit and is currently expanding her practice into large scale work through 9 foot by 36 foot commission. She has participated in a residency at M. David & Co. in Bushwick, Brooklyn. She currently serves as President of The Painting Center in New York.

Upcoming projects include a solo exhibition titled Emergent Light at Adelphi University, on view June 2 through August 2, with an opening on June 3, as well as a presentation at Future Fair. Petker Mintz will also be in a group show titled In Full Bloom at Untitled Space at 45 Lispenard Street in Tribeca.

Artist Statement

I begin some paintings by falling in love too quickly. The color lands, the surface opens, and everything feels right. The paint moves, accidents happen, and I follow.

But that is never the whole story.

Other paintings resist. They become awkward, overworked, even unwanted. I lose them. In those moments, I have to decide whether to walk away or stay.

I stay.

I push the painting further, sometimes too far, until it nearly collapses. And then something shifts. Not a correction, but a return in a new form. A quieter structure emerges, carrying everything it has been through.

This exhibition brings together both experiences. The works that arrived through ease and the ones that had to be lost and found again. What remains holds a deeper history.