Oolong Gallery New York

Michael Colletta Tea-soaked madeleine

Jul 10 – Aug 2, 2026

4 Cortlandt Alley NYC

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Image Credit: Phillipp Scholz Ritterman

Opening Reception July 10 from 6-9PM during Tribeca Gallery Night in Lower Manhattan.

Michael Colletta received his MFA degree from Yale University (1987) in a historic group including Lisa Yuskavage and John Currin, following his BA from UC Santa Cruz. He has 30 years painting experience specializing in working from life as well as from the imagination. Colletta has taught classes in studio art at UC Santa Cruz and currently teaches at UC San Diego Extension. His work has been exhibited nationally and belongs to many private collections. The painter lives and works in Encinitas, California where Oolong Gallery was founded. 



Michael Colletta’s paintings are rooted in the ordinary events that accumulate into a life: gatherings of family, childhood play on suburban streets, garage-band concerts, the watering of plants, the umbrellaing of a beloved, and the solace of remembered places. Echoing the exhibition’s title, Tea-soaked Madeleine, these works arise from a mysterious transformation of memory into universally intimate micro-monuments. Working from memory and invention as much as observation, Colletta pares away incidental detail to arrive at images that feel at once personal and archetypal. His recurring figures and motifs function less as portraits of specific individuals than as a means to convey affection, longing, wonder, and belonging.

Colletta’s paintings possess a quiet emotional gravity. Their simplified forms, carefully orchestrated color relationships, and luminous spaces create a world where everyday experience takes on an almost mythic dimension. Colletta reminds us that profound meaning is often found not in extraordinary events, but in the moments that linger in memory long after they have passed, acquiring a significance greater than the events themselves.

—Larry Groff

Marcel Proust viewed involuntary memory as containing the "essence of the past," claiming that it was lacking from voluntary memory. When the protagonist of Proust's novel eats a tea-soaked madeleine, a long-forgotten childhood memory of eating tea-soaked madeleine with his aunt is restored to him. From this memory, he then proceeds to recall the childhood home he was in, and even the town itself. This becomes a theme throughout In Search of Lost Time, with sensations reminding the narrator of previous experiences. Proust dubbed these "involuntary memories".

The exhibition title underscores how painter Michael Colletta works from memory in the studio, allowing gesture and mark-making to reshape the experience of everyday life.

"I grew up in Alhambra, California, a city bordered by Los Angeles and South Pasadena. My uncle was a painter and his paintings and drawings of landscapes and ocean scenes hung on the walls of our home. At an early age his paintings held my attention and I would look at them up close and see the marks of paint on the flat canvas. Then I would stand several feet away and the canvas was no longer flat but instead an illusion of a three dimensional space. I began to try and copy them with the goal of creating a window to another place. With each attempt, however, my paintings never looked or felt like his. Over time I realized that I could never create his space but instead I could create my own. My work starts in a simple way. A woman putting her towel down at the beach, my daughter watering her garden, my wife taking a sip of wine, or the memory of my brother playing guitar can all be possible beginnings for a painting. I start by drawing. Often a sketch without using direct observation. Many times I make multiple drawings to discover the composition, light, and form. When I can not understand how to draw a particular passage I might draw that part from direct observation. I make many drawings and from them I pick some to use as a start for a painting while others are put away. When I start a painting I have no idea what it will eventually look like. I see my paintings as drawings. The process is much the same as I compare how one mark looks next to another, but painting is more complex. Instead of drawing with a pencil and an eraser I am now drawing with a brush, paint, solvent, rag, and a pallet knife. And while my drawings are generally black and white and small, my paintings are larger and in color. I work on the paintings one at a time and they often require many hours of just looking at them in order to figure out the next move. The process of making a painting is meditative for me. From the act of making, I begin to think of my past, my future, and the present. I think of the mystery of life and I search for understanding beyond the material world and to connect with something greater than myself. These windows or visual daydreams are attempts at finding a place where space, time, and emotion merge as one."

—Michael Colletta

Oolong Gallery

Est. 2022, San Diego & New York City

4 Cortlandt Alley, New York, NY 10013

6030 La Flecha, Rancho Santa Fe, CA 92067

Telephone +1 858 229 2788  Mobile +1 917 340 0877

www.oolongallery.com