The Shape of Us
Tulia Day
Melissa Halbrook
March 6 2026 - March 28 2026
In recognition of Women’s History Month, The Jane Gallery presents The Shape of Us, a two-artist exhibition of contemporary figurative painting in which women paint the feminine form through a reflective and self-authored lens.
Opening March 6 during Old City’s First Friday, The Shape of Us explores the nude form as a constituent presence and extols the tangible over the spectacle. Our featured painters,Tulia Day and Melissa Halbrook, render the female figure with nuanced, grounded appreciation. Their works present bodies as transformative vessels that openly bear storied histories of endurance, pleasure, vulnerability, and confidence. Every piece promotes agency over idealization and invites viewers to examine the figure as psychologically complex and materially real.
The Shape of Us celebrates women in their full dimensionality: soft and strong, bold and tender, powerful and playful. Stretch marks, shifting forms, aging skin, and gestures of rest or assertion appear as markers of lived experience rather than blemishes to be corrected. The body is reclaimed as presence rather than perfection. There is no singular ideal proposed here; instead, the exhibition affirms multiplicity and self-definition.
At a moment when national conversations surrounding autonomy, accountability, and power remain active, The Shape of Us participates in a broader institutional reconsideration of the nude. Recent museum and gallery presentations dedicated to Joan Semmel’s autonomous self-portraiture and major surveys of Jenny Saville’s corporeal figuration signal renewed attention to authorship and perspective within figurative practice. Within this evolving context, Day and Halbrook’s work centers the female gaze as both subject and author.
In recognition that representation and lived reality remain intertwined, a portion of exhibition proceeds will benefit Women Against Abuse, Philadelphia’s comprehensive domestic violence advocate and service provider. Their mission is to provide quality, compassionate, and nonjudgmental services that foster self-respect and independence for individuals experiencing intimate partner violence and to lead the struggle to end domestic violence through advocacy and community education.
Daisy, 2024 12 x 9 in Oil on Canvas SOLD
Melissa Halbrook Chloe #2 12 x 16 in Oil on Canvas SOLD
Melissa Halbrook Kailey, 2025 16 x 20 in Oil on Panel SOLD
Melissa Halbrook Bern 2025 16 x 12 in Pastel on paper SOLD
Tulia Day The Runaway Queen, 2024. Charcoal and Pastel on Paper 9 x 12 in SOLD
Featured Artists
Tulia Day
Tulia Day is a multidisciplinary artist from Philadelphia. In 2018, Tulia earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from Hamilton College, where she received awards for her artistic achievements. In 2021, Tulia collaborated with local artists to create a weekly life drawing workshop in Philadelphia. This workshop, hosted by the Upstairs Smoking Section art collective, has run weekly to present day. Since 2025, Tulia has worked as an art partner with My Brother’s Keeper Cares, a nonprofit that raises suicide awareness and provides mental health resources to the community. In this role, she designs and leads workshops guiding participants to express their emotions through visual art. Tulia has exhibited work at galleries including The Jane Gallery, The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Site Brooklyn, and Lore Degenstein. Her portraits have been commissioned by patrons nationally and abroad.
Melissa Halbrook
Melissa Halbrook is co-founder and proprietor of Realist Art League, a visual arts studio in Philadelphia focused on teaching, critique, open studio sessions, and collaboration with artists. She is an instructor at the Philadelphia Sketch Club and other local arts organizations. She also completed an artist residency at L.A. Studio in Patton, PA in 2025. In 2024, Melissa attended the Mount Gretna School of Art in Mt. Gretna, PA. She has previously studied at Studio Incamminati, School for Contemporary Realist Art in Philadelphia, PA and at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA where she received a B.A. in Anthropology in 2017.
Featured Programming
Goddess Altar Blessing
As part of our March exhibition for Women’s Month, @cassiescraftcoven x The Jane Gallery present a Goddess Altar installation within the gallery — a living work centered on feminine creative power in all its forms.
On First Friday, Coven head Witch Cassie Jones leads a blessing of the space. Guests are invited to contribute: leave a written offering and sculpt a clay goddess totem. Each handmade figure becomes part of the artwork, traveling with the altar as it moves beyond the gallery.
Experience
Photography: Shannon Geurin
