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GYRLE: paintings by Peggy Reavey

Peggy Reavey at her studio in San Pedro, December 2025. Photographed by Guillaume Zuili.

On the occasion of her 2018 exhibition, When the Whale Dogs Come Back, I wrote, “Peggy Reavey is a figurative painter and storyteller. Her work has been variously described as eccentric, surreal, tender, caustic, and largely autobiographical… Formally, Reavey’s paintings are raw, seemingly uncooked by cultural and artistic influences… resulting in often daring compositional inventiveness.” To this I would today add: “idiosyncratic narrative painting”, as image and titles/text present as a story. Biblical and philosophical conundrums abound enriching the viewing experience. - Ron Linden, Curator GYRLE: paintings by Peggy Reavey at solo, curated by Ron Linden. On view from December 21, 2025 until January 31, 2026

Gyrle whale in the great flood, 2025.

Gyrle experiment: the influencer will show you how, 2023.

Cross the bad gyrle out, 2022.

Gyrle: beehive, velvet drapes, magnolia tree, bees, feet, 2025.

Do not eat that!, 2022.

Girl experiment #14: Ficus with panties, 2024.

Uxoricide!, 2022.

I was asleep when God came back. Genesis Chapter 15, 8-10, 2023.

Antimony Altarpiece, 2022.

Woodale Road, 2025.

Peggy Reavey - GYRLE

on opposite sides of the street. Woodale Road was the most ordinary of suburban streets, a single block long lined with semi-detached houses and sycamore trees. Peggy has said that the spectacle of watching her father race out the door to work in the morning while her mother got to stay We would lie on our backs in the grass

home in a comfortable chair drinking coffee

behind the house and stare up at the sky.

and smoking cigarettes and reading whatever

Two little girls. Something fundamental was

she felt like reading and doing whatever she felt

being conceived then though we didn’t know it.

like doing raised from the outset the question

She was my best friend. Of course you can’t

of who had it better and what exactly she

tell what’s going on in someone else’s head—

would prefer to spend her life doing, turning

or heart, for that matter. “How do we know

what would seem to be the conventional

there’s a world?” we wanted to know. What

wisdom on its head. The conventional wisdom,

we did know was that we were two little girls,

the conventional lifestyle, the conventional

one of whom was named Peggy. The word

anything, all of them—on their heads! The way

“psyche” was in her future, along with the

to get to do what you wanted to do was to be

word “gyrles”—“psyche” and “gyrles” and

a GYRLE (a word originally meaning “child”), to

these miraculous paintings.

set the stage early for the subversive domestic

Peggy Reavey, christened Margaret

dramas her paintings are enacting. This is not

Vosburgh Lentz, was born at 8:16 in the

surrealism. The word “miraculous” should not

evening of February 8, 1947, in Women’s

be taken lightly.

Medical College, Philadelphia. Her Sun was

We are in a Victorian drawing room, its

in Aquarius and trined by Uranus, her Venus

furnishings predictable, an upholstered settee,

conjunct with Lilith, a lightning bolt combination

a golden drape, a red table lamp, a radiator, a

conducive to the creation of both Femme Fatale

pair of pink glass goblets. This is “The Vosburgh

and Dearly Beloved. At the time of her birth

Poisoning Case,” painted by Reggy Reavey

Peggy’s parents were living in the house she

in Los Angeles in the early years of the

was living in when we first met, two little girls

twenty-first century. continued

We are in a Northern European dining

sense of being representational, when what she

room, its furnishings predictable, a dark wood

is doing is truly visionary, every painted surface,

banquette, a pedestal table, a fireplace, a

every painted subject numinous. No one has

recently extinguished candle, an earthenware

been painting paintings even remotely like

jug. This is “The Merode Altarpiece,” painted

these for a very long time.

by Robert Campin in the Netherlands in the

How do we know there’s a world? Every

middle years of the fifteenth century. I like to

painting in this spell-binding show is asking a

think of Peggy seeing the triptych for the first

version of that question. That is, how do we

time on a high school trip to the Cloisters;

know that what presents itself to us as “the

certainly her methodology can be traced back

world” is what it actually seems to be? How did

to the Northern Renaissance, materials and

it come to be, this thing we presume to think we

techniques she learned to deploy while a

know? What was God up to, making a world?

student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the

And, more to the point, what was he up to,

Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

making GYRLES? Where did he go, looking for

In both instances the setting is apparently

ideas? Was he looking for hints, for signs? He

conventional. In both instances the goings-

doesn’t seem to have located them in anything

on—in the first a woman is being poisoned,

we’ve come to think of as GIRLS, that’s for

in the second a woman is being impregnated

sure. Red red lipstick and shapely legs and

by the Holy Ghost—are anything but. In both

underpants are the only things he seems to

instances there is a proliferation of enigmatic

have gotten right. Stonework and birds and

lettering, in both instances there is something

curtains and trees? A whale? A beehive? Once

utterly inexplicable (an oversized prehistoric

again, the subjects are numinous!

insect hovering near the ceiling, an undersized

Lie down on your back. That’s where Peggy

infant Jesus coming through the window), in

Reavey wants you, lying right there on your back

both instances there is a lot more going on

in the grass with her, looking up at the sky,

than meets the eye. Each of Peggy Reavey’s

asking questions.

paintings, in its remarkable precision of detail, its luminosity of surface, conveys a misleading

Kathryn Davis, December 2025

Kathryn Davis is an award-winning American novelist. She has published eight novels and one memoir. Duplex, her seventh novel, is dedicated to “my first generation of girls”—that includes Peggy Reavey.

Gyrle: egg nest, drawing, power-pole, shoes, 2025.

All works © copyright Peggy Reavey. All rights reserved. solo. an art gallery by studio mousetrap is located at 366 W 7th Street, San Pedro, California 90731. Intro by Ron Linden. Essay by Kathryn Davis. Art Captures by David Winthrop Hanson. Printed at Acuprint. Published in December 2025 by Studio Mousetrap, LLC.

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