
Exhibition preview·Mill Valley
Rob Reynolds Turns Octavia Butler's Apocalypse and Thoreau's Forests Into New Sun Paintings
Los Angeles-based Rob Reynolds is showing 'Be Like the Sun, Never Done' at Anthony Meier in Mill Valley, with watercolors and paintings inspired by Octavia Butler's Parable novels and the changing natural world, on view 1 October to 18 December 2026.
Anthony Meier gallery in Mill Valley, California, is presenting a new solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Rob Reynolds. Titled 'Be Like the Sun, Never Done', the show opened on 1 October and continues through 18 December 2026 at 21 Throckmorton Avenue. At the heart of the exhibition is a suite of watercolors and paintings called 'New Suns', which takes its spark from Octavia Butler's Parable novels. In those books, climate catastrophe and social breakdown drive a search for new habitable worlds; Reynolds translates that mood of rupture and renewal into studies of atmosphere, light and sky. He treats weather as both physical fact and cultural symbol, exploring how a shifting climate reshapes perception. Other strands of the exhibition extend the same concerns. A series of botanical paintings grew out of walks Reynolds took in the forests near Walden Pond, retracing the ground covered by Henry David Thoreau. Separate works picture specific sunrises the artist remembers from consequential moments in his own life, treating remembered light as a trigger for reflection on landscape and change. The works on show include both watercolors and paintings, a balance that suits the exhibition's attention to atmosphere. Reynolds has said he sees sky, air and light as simultaneously physical and symbolic, and the Mill Valley presentation tests that idea across the full range of his recent output. The gallery's address, 21 Throckmorton Avenue, sits in the heart of the small Marin County town. The show was picked out in C Magazine's roundup of ten California gallery exhibitions to see this autumn, alongside presentations by Glenn Ligon at Hauser & Wirth, David Lynch at Pace Gallery and BTS member RM's collecting lens at SFMOMA. The selection marks Reynolds' exhibition as one of the season's notable Northern California gallery outings.


