"CMCA will present the thematic group exhibition, The View from Here, that will feature works by over a dozen artists (including two collaboratives) who have previously exhibited or otherwise been involved at CMCA across our history (1952-2022). The celebratory exhibition will coincide with CMCA’s 70th anniversary, and the unifying concept will be unique and dynamic ways of looking at the world through new or recent works, underscoring CMCA’s forward-thinking trajectory. Artists include: Katherine Bradford, Sam Cady, Ann Craven, Lois Dodd, Inka Essenhigh, Linden Frederick, Alison Hildreth, Hilary Irons, Erin Johnson, John Moore, Tessa Green O’Brien, Wade Kavenaugh & Stephen Nguyen, Probably Joel, Aaron T Stephan, tectonic industries, Joyce Tenneson, and Nicole Wittenberg, among others."

"Modalities of memory and surveillance tumble over one another in Hawkeye. Hodges’s series relates the huddled referees, conferring an event to a mother’s keen watchfulness over her child. He builds a grammar of tiled floors, wallpaper and tennis courts, a patterned robe and sports uniforms: forms are affected loosely, dancing with the evidence of their brush work in the presence of blackness. Hodges preserves the multiplicity of his subject matter by applying a light touch to snap shots of the past, rendering them hazy and indistinct. Meanings are entangled, tense with forces of personal memory. Hodges grasps with this momentum and guides it into the gentle, profound collisions which ripple through this work."

"The early paintings mark the transformative, if not to say slow, awakening of Welliver’s own work. The ravenous, raucous, uncontained early works ricochet between abstraction and realism. In the late landscapes, for which he is best known, the seem- ing slapdash urgency of these early paintings dis- sipates into something new, vital, and central to the artist’ s being. In W elliver’ s mature, monumental paintings of Maine’s northern forests and streams we see a new kind of painting where surface han- dling, painterly gesture, and subject — unruly nature — seamlessly merge and quietly coalesce. The fading memory of those manicured lawns of suburban academia — Manet-like picnics on the grass with fellow faculty accompanied by nude models, dogs, sheep, and general dissonance — eventually yield to the randomness of nature for its own sake on its own terms. Those early collisions of fantasy and reality — butterflies and friends, sheep and tubas — finally resolve into Welliver’s full, final embrace of plangent nature, as source and solace."

In 2010, visual artists Will Sears and Tessa O’Brien found themselves doing set design for a Maine music festival. For Tessa, the job came 8 years into the 12 she spent traveling the country doing just such work. Will, however, was new to the art production world and not a Mainer. He just happened to be in state for an art residency when a mutual friend (the sculptor John Bisbee) recommended him for the gig. By the time Will and Tessa had transitioned from friends who met while working to a couple with a house in Portland’s East End, Tessa had tired of the on-the-road lifestyle. She wanted to be engaged with her own community. Although Will took her place on the road for a while, he had the same desire. The two were never going to give up their respective studio practices, but they found a way to settle down by creating their own opportunities, adopting a “collage as lifestyle” approach to earning a living.

Mention American Abstract Expressionism, and most people immediately think of the 1940s and ’50s, first-generation Ab Ex artists Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, or the co- emergent Color Field painters who included Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still and Barnett Newman. The next generation overlapped with the first, emerging in earnest in the 1960s and spawning talents such as Morris Louis, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell and Kenneth Noland. These painters continued to reject figurative and representational art but allowed wider latitude; sometimes, for example, obliquely referring to landscapes. Their looser, softer work was dubbed Post-Painterly Abstraction by the influential critic Clement Greenberg.

The four painters now holding court at Dowling Walsh begin the trajectory of American Abstraction in the first generation with Stephen Pace, technically acknowledge the second with Noland (though the paintings here are from 2006-2007, near his death in Port Clyde in 2010, and are of a different order entirely) and come to rest in Lyrical Abstraction of the 1970s with Ann Purcell and Syd Solomon, whose touch was lighter and brighter than either previous genre.

Like yin and yang, realist painter Bo Bartlett and abstract painter Betsy Eby are opposites working in perfect harmony. But the dualism extends beyond their art, to the two paradoxical locations they choose to practice it — Bartlett’s native Columbus, Georgia, in winter, and, in summer, a tiny island 23 miles off the coast of Port Clyde, in Maine.

Throughout Maine’s history, women have played key leadership roles in the shaping of the state. From groundbreaking politicians to cultural pioneers, women in Maine have been and continue to be trailblazers in their respective fields. The Farnsworth Art Museum owes its existence to one such woman who, through her generosity and vision, helped transform the small, working-class city of Rockland, a community of just over 7,000 people, into what is now recognized as the art capital of Maine. 

Marilyn Turtz is included in the exhibition, The Medium as Muse currently on view at the Nassau County Museum of Art through May 17, 2020. The exhibition also includes works by Michael Albert, Richard Estes, Maryellen Hackett, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Abby Weir, and Lisa Zilker. 

This summer, we selected six poems by women and asked photographers to let the poems inspire them.

- The New York Times

PEAKS ISLAND — Scott Kelley walks slowly down Island Avenue, lamenting the culture of fear that has lately directed the course of American life. These days, a lot of people spend a lot of time and energy consumed with fear, worrying about protecting their borders and their homes and combating the omniscient bogeyman.

Kelley isn’t buying it. He’s not naive about the dangers and threats of modern society, but he refuses to raise his kid in a culture of fear.

It was from that mindset that Kelley, a fine-art painter best known for his engrossingly detailed watercolors of flamingos and herons, wrote and illustrated his first children’s book, “I Am Birch.” Yarmouth-based Islandport Press releases the book this week, and Kelley celebrates with a launch party at 4:30 p.m. Friday at Maine Historical Society in Portland.

On the edge of Norway's north-west coast, world renowned photographers, aspiring photographers, photography students and others interested in photography, art and culture gather in the charming city of Kristiansund.  Joyce Tenneson is one of the prominent photographers that will be exhibiting and lecturing during Nordic Light 2018.

It's been well documented that a brush with death can reframe a person's relationship with life. When a car crash left photographer Cig Harvey unable to speak for several weeks, she turned to her art to make sense of life and the human experience. Harvey's most recent book, You an Orchestra You a Bomb, recalls in sprightly color and inky darkness the shortness of our time on earth. Through photographs and text, the book both celebrates and mourns the fleeting nature of existence. "Underneath thin skin, amongst saliva, organs, and bone, we are orchestras,” Harvey writes. "But open our mouths, deep down between tears, nerves, and gristle, we are bombs."

Alexandra Tyng was featured in the November/December issue of Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors. Carl Little discusses Tyng's relationship with Maine and the processes behind her plein air paintings. "Plein air painting," she told critic Stephen May, is "my source of ideas, and a way of keeping my brushstrokes fresh and my color sense accurate." 

Cig Harvey was featured in the New York Times for her new series "You an Orchestra You a Bomb." Jonathan Blaustein writes, "Her book and exhibit carefully recreate that sense of childhood wonder, mizing saturted colors with verdant symbols and engaging text, allowing viewers to contemplate that sense of the unknown, but from a place of joy rather thatn anxiety."

This exhibition will combine poems by poet laureate Richard Blanco with the artwork of photographer Jacob Hessler in order to explore the physical, imagined, and psychological boundary lines – both historic and current that have plagued our American Society. Although the world continues to move its way towards being boundary-less with advances in technology (air travel/social media/etc.), our nation continues to feel more and more polarized, repeating our past mistakes and drawing lines in the sand with an us vs. them mentality.

Across this North American continent, lie both visible and invisible boundaries.

In 2018 Colin Page will be teaching a painting class in Rockland, ME September 17-21. He is limiting the class to just 12 students this year. Because of high demand for the class in previous years, sign ups for this class are throguh a lottery. Tuition is $995, and the class is being organized by Coastal Maine Art Workshops. 

To enter the lottery for this class, send an email to info@cmaworkshops.com between 9am October 23 and 5pm October 27. They will acknowledge receipt of the email, so you won't have to worry if it came through. Only emails received during the times listed above will be entered into the drawing. The names will literally be put into a hat, and Colin's daughters will pull out the names. 12 people will be selected for the class and another 20 will be chosen for a wait list. 

If you are selected for the class plan to register online and pay your $300 deposit by November 30, 2017. If they don't have your registration by the deadline they will have to pass your place on to the next wait list name. If you are chosen for the wait list, no registration or deposit is due unless you are moved on to the class list. 

If you have any questions about this process feel free to email Colin at cadmiumred33@hotmail.com or Lyn at info@cmaworkshops.com. 

Colin Page’s article, An Artist Goes Sailing, was featured in the latest issue of Maine Boats, Homes and Harbors. Page discusses his recent interest in sailing and the effect that it’s had on his paintings. “I’m reminded to keep looking for places I can grow as an artist. I’m reminded to look for joy in my art making. As I sit in the studio in the winter, I remember the feeling of the wind filling my sails and pushing me forward. As I paint a harbor scene, I recall looking for shifts of color telling me about gusts of wind on the water. As I paint sunlight bouncing on ripples, I recall the way my boat rode over the chop and slid through the ocean.” 

Bo Bartlett’s studio on Wheaton Island was featured in the article, Island Life by Polly Saltonstall in Maine Boats, Homes and Harbors. Bartlett and his wife, Betsy Eby each have studios on the island, giving them beautiful spaces to make work while facing the ocean. “It’s beyond our wildest expectations,” said Bartlett. 

Alexandra Tyng has just been featured in Articulate, an Emmy® award-winning arts and culture show nationally syndicated on PBS. The segment “Pictures of You” explores how portraits are “a lie that illustrates the truth.” In the interview with Alexandra, she gives her professional insight into the unique relationship between artist and subject, highlighting the trust that the subject places in the artist.

When my grandparents retired they bought a farmhouse with the idea that it would be an ideal place for their children and grandchildren to gather. They commissioned my mother to design an addition to the house that became known as “the ship” because of its unusual shape. It was the first space frame ever built for living. Unfortunately it burned to the ground several years after my grandmother sold the house. Recently I became curious to find the spot where it used to be. 

Linda Tracey Brandon is an imaginative realist painter working in oils and graphic media. She frequently writes about art lindatraceybrandon.com

Eric Green’s work is currently featured in a group exhibition at Bernarducci Meisel Gallery titled “Size Doesn’t Matter”. The exhibition is a survey of small works curated by Susan P. Meisel and will run through April 29, 2017. It includes three of Eric Green’s Mirrored Room series.

Bo Bartlett’s current museum exhibition Bo Bartlett: American Artist at the Mennello Museum of American Art was reviewed by Hind Berji in Artborne Magazine. “Bartlett’s work-in all its anticipation and apprehension-is still nostalgic; it somehow reminds us of the thoroughly American childhood some of us never had, like the pile of leaves we never jumped into or the calm summer days we never truly enjoyed. It reminds us of optimism that is embedded in our cultural fabric and the sadness that accompanies it.”

Sarah McRae Morton’s current exhibition, The Mountain Whale at Red Raven Art Company in Pennsylvania was reviewed in Lancaster Online. “Her canvases are filled with elements of history, imagination and romance, swirled together with a confidence reminiscent of the masters.” The exhibition will be on view through the end of February.

The Maine Museum of Photographic Arts is presenting an exhibition of Joyce Tenneson’s mixed media photography works. The exhibition, “Joyce Tenneson’s Maine: Gold Trees” runs from February 16- May 30, 2017. There will be an Opening Reception on Thursday, February 16 from 6-8 pm and and Artist Talk on Thursday, May 11 from 6-8 pm.

“Trees throughout history have inspired deep symbolic meaning in cultures around the world. The “tree of life” metaphor expresses the mystical concept that all forms of life are interconnected. When we stand with the trees, we feel we are part of them, and they are part of us. They give us a sense of belonging to the greater universe.”

The Mennello Museum of American Art is presenting an exhibition of Bartlett’s work titled, Bo Bartlett: American Artist. The exhibition opens January 27, 2017 and will be open through May 7, 2017. “The exhibition present large-scale oil paintings that are figurative, psychologically imbued, beautifully rendered, and wonderfully sublime by one of the most significant Realist painters of his generation.” In conjunction with this exhibition, the Orlando Museum of Art will present four additional major paintings by the artist.

Sarah McRae Morton’s exhibition “Mapping Stars at Noon” was reviewed this week in The Seattle Times. Michael Upchurch writes, “Morton’s work is visionary, virtuosic and full of bewildering surprises. Her paintings are both rigorously composed and deliciously unhinged. The sheer energy she conveys on the canvas is a marvel.” 

Eric Green was recently interviewed by Jan Anders Nelson on his blog, Artist Interrupted. In an answer to the question by Nelsen, “Why do you do what you do?” Green says, “I suppose I was compelled because of being overwhelmed by the poetry of being alive. I wanted to show others what I felt and saw.”

Eric Green’s paintings were featured in the Winter issue of The Gettysburg Review.

Green’s work, “Pole” 1994, Acrylic on panel 34″ x 56″ can be seen here on the cover.

Connie Hayes was recently interviewed in the Art of Maine issue of Maine Thing Quarterly. “When Connie Hayes says something is beautiful, it’s not just an observation. It’s a call to action. “My process is to be astonished first,” she explained. “When I’m astonished with the light, with the color, with the shape – the way the yellow is pulsating underneath something – that astonishment makes me itchy. My hands start to move. I’m grabbing for paper.”

Scott Kelley will be featured in the upcoming Of Whales in Paint: Rockwell Kent’s Moby Dick, on view from October 15 through December 31, 2016. The installation, inspired by the PMA’s recent acquisition of a Lakeside Press Rockwell Kent edition of the novel, will examine historic and contemporary artistic responses to Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. The museum chose several of Kelley’s paintings and scrimshaw pieces for the exhibition, as well as works by Jamie Wyeth, Frank Stella and Leonard Baskin.

SCOTT KELLEY will give a talk at the opening reception for OF WHALES IN PAINT at the PORTLAND MUSEUM OF ART on Friday, October 14th, beginning at 6:00 PM. Several of Mr. Kelley’s works are included in the exhibition, along with works by Rockwell Kent, Jamie Wyeth, Leonard Baskin and others. Admission is free – we hope to see you there!

Kate Murphy recently interviewed Jonathan Laurence for Frontrunner magazine. The conversation covers Jonathan’s inspiration, travel, and his exhibition GLTCH at the Dowling Walsh Gallery.

The painter David Vickery explores space: outdoor, indoor, around, above, across, beyond. He is equally expert at representing the parlor and the panorama, the intimate and the out there.

The Van Campen family was featured in the December issue of Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors in an article written by Ann Dodds Costello. Costello writes, “Is a child whose parents are successful artists inclined to become an artist, and when this happens, why does it happen? Is it genetic or the result of being raised by artists in a home full of art?” The article discusses Tim, Susan, and Greta Van Campen’s backgrounds, various artistic practices, and influences.

Artist Alan Magee, who lives in Cushing, will speak at the Waldoboro Public Library on Wednesday, July 20, at 7 p.m. Magee will discuss the influence of literature on his work.

Connie Hayes is one of Maine’s best-known painters. She was born in Gardiner and now lives and works in Rockland. Through the ’80s, she held administrative and teaching posts at Maine College of Art. In the ’90s she lived in New York City. Her work has been extremely popular: Greenhut Galleries sold many hundreds of her paintings in the past and Dowling Walsh does very well with her now. Her work is familiar. Yet, Hayes’ large exhibition of new works at Dowling Walsh, “New Work From Italy,” caught me by surprise.

In early 1991, art critic Roberta Smith looked over Bo Bartlett’s painting God—a sweeping image of a black man, poised in front of a sweeping coastal horizon, wrapped in a quilt—and came slightly unglued. In her New York Times review of the exhibition she later wrote of the piece: “As consciousness raising, this is fairly simple-minded. As history painting, it’s idiotic.” In the same column, Smith also dings Bartlett for his “conservative” artistic style (realism), dismissing his paintings as being “more trendy than timeless.” Smith’s comments, which generated a domino effect of subsequent negative reviews—by Peter Schjeldahl, Michael Kimmelman and others—re-shaped the arc of Bartlett’s career.

Alexandra Tyng’s painting, Jet Streams, will be the cover art for “Art of Acadia” (June 2016,) the new book by brothers David and Carl Little. Jet Streams will also be part of Acadia National Park’s Centennial celebration in an exhibit at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratories this summer.

Joyce Tenneson, renowned photographer, presents a lecture at the UNM Center for the Arts in room 2018 on Friday, April 22 at 5:15 p.m.  The lecture is sponsored by the UNM Department of Art and Art History. For more information, contact the UNM Center for the Arts at (505) 277-2112 or at finearts@unm.edu or visit Joyce Tenneson.

Featured on The Paris Review Blog: http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/04/25/time-diptychs-mirrored-rooms/.

“James Dodds’ pictures look as though they’ve been created with the use of an adze, a caulking mallet and a rip saw, but that’s not surprising when you discover that these were the tools he once wielded as a shipwright before ever he picked up a paintbrush.”

These words from Yachting Monthly journalist Dick Durham give as good an insight as any into the former merchant sailor and apprentice shipwright whose latest exhibition of oils, some on wood, others on linen, opens at Messum’s in Cork Street, Mayfair on April 5.

Eleven-year-old outsider artist, Elliot, has been creating socially poignant and conscience work in his hometown of Portland, Oregon. His youth affords him a fresh perspective without the constraints of a traditional artistic background. Elliot is a self-taught artist with an innate vision. Each piece is as much about the subject as it is about the creative act itself. He interlaces authentic subjects and genuine forms with supernatural themes. As an emerging artist, his visionary perspective is worth close attention.

Larry Groff recently interviewed Connie Hayes for Painting Perceptions, a blog that serves as a vehicle for artists to present and discuss their ideas and work through interview format.  He was fortunate to meet Connie last summer in Civita Castellana, Italy and was curious to find out more about her new body of work. 

Jacob and Alissa Hessler are a husband-and-wife creative team who run a boutique creative studio in the wilds of coastal Maine while teaching modern landscape photography around the United States.  B&H Photo Video recently talked to the pair to get their thoughts on building a creative community.  

Shawn Fields and Alexandra Tyng are listed as two of the 50 Memorable Painters, as curated by John Seed and Didi Melendez, 2015 edition. 

Great Selections for the Holiday Season with 20% Off List Price and Complimentary Shipping Through December 20, 2015.

There is a diaspora underway in the national art culture. Artists, for a variety of reasons, are migrating to regions where a kinder quality of life may be found. They seek an economic equation that affords artists their most coveted luxury, time in the studio. These migrations are creating some interesting cross-pollination of ideas and Maine is a beneficiary of this trend. The paintings of Elizabeth Fox import to Maine some welcome characteristics from her former home in New Orleans. They have also absorbed and reflect back imagery acquired in her new home in Standish, Maine. She paints the mundane world around her as if she imagined it, dreamed it.

Whether studying aerial views from a plane, painting from a model, or working directly from nature, this Philadelphia artist establishes a reason to paint something. For her, there has to be a theme or an idea worth exploring.

 Her re-invention of a type of painting popularized by Rembrandt and the Dutch Baroque — the “tronie” — is far more than an antiquarian enterprise in this age of “selfies.” McCoy’s paintings of friends and family recall the long tradition of such explorations of the human psyche — from Leonardo’s late-in-life self-portrait drawing to Rembrandt’s etchings of himself from youthful blade to weary old age. More recent artists have portrayed themselves in their work — David Hockney, Chuck Close, Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman — and Elizabeth Peyton paints small-scale heads of friends and celebrities. McCoy’s approach, however, is uniquely her own, and “Dandelion Puff,” for example, exhibits an endearing, self-deprecating humor, tinged with intimations of mortality, comparing her own tightly curled hair not just to the ubiquitous flower, bane of bourgeois suburban lawns, but to its final, fragile state of impending dissolution just one breath away.

At what point does realism become unreal? Can we still speak of representation if an artwork actually incorporates its subject? How much does beauty depend on recognition? Questions like these pop up while wandering through Jesse Gillespie’s first show at Rockland’s Dowling Walsh Gallery. In basic terms, the artist mounts ordinary, found objects on panels and paints the entire piece with layers of acrylic medium and oil paint to achieve a very selective, muted palette. Most artists who work with found objects value them for their history. Gillespie erases that history, making the objects universal and timeless. 

JOIN US FOR AN EVENING WITH BO BARTLETT and learn about the exciting plans, vision and mission of The Bo Bartlett Center in Columbus, Georgia, from Bo Bartlett and the Center’s Executive Director and Board Members.

Dowling Walsh Gallery is pleased to announce representation of the Estate of Stephen Pace (1918-2010) in Maine. Stephen Pace is known for his abstract expressionist paintings, which over time evolved into an exuberant broad-brush representational style of scenes from his surroundings in Maine.

An excerpt: “One feels with Runquist that he is fearless when it comes to making art… he is not afraid of making mistakes – indeed, he often leaves them in. At the same time, if he starts to feel too comfortable with a painting or finds himself getting nervous about making a mistake, he will “throw some paint at it” to break the spell and make for a more dynamic image.”

Dowling Walsh Gallery will be hosting a sale of artwork from a private collection offered at a significant value for the month of April.

Bo Bartlett was interviewed in the Columbus Ledger Inquirer with an online video accompanying the article.

‘If I don’t have one big painting going, I feel like I am not sure why I am alive.’

David Vickery’s painting, Monhegan Mowers, is on the cover of the Winter 2014 issue of The Gettysburg Review. An interior feature includes five other paintings: Island Line, Dormer, Wheelbarrow, Monhegan, Staircase, and January First.

A visual presentation and conversation reflecting on Eric’s vision of Nature, Art, Science, Philosophy, Matter and Spirit.

Lincoln Theater, 2 Theater Street, Damariscotta – www.atthelincoln.org or 207-563-3424 

Cig Harvey’s photograph is on the cover of PRO Photographer magazine, with a full feature article inside.

“Cig Harvey’s deceptively simple photographs tap into the universal elements of the human experience: love, loss, longing and belonging. She’s in demand for editorial and commercial work—as well as her for her fine art prints and books.”

Cig Harvey will be speaking at PhotoPlus Expo in NYC this Friday, 31st Oct at 10:15am. Come by to hear her seminar, “Turning Ideas Into Pictures: A Personal Story.”

Eric Green’s current show of Time Diptychs was reviewed in the Penobscot Bay Pilot.

“The concept of a diptych of two images joined to make one is a very old concept,” said Green. “The way I balance the two images is to show changes from one panel to the other, because when you really begin to understand life, everything changes completely all the time. Nothing is ever the same again.”

Sarah McRae Morton’s current show at Dowling Walsh, “The Impossible Sight of a Ship”, was well reviewed in the Portland Press Herald today.

“It is every bit as compelling as it is alarming.”

Connie Hayes has been named to the Faculty of the JSS in Civita Summer Art School & Residency in Italy. She will teach an intense, three-week course, titled “Borrowed Views,” for artists who have tried painting on location, and seriously want to improve their process, skill and, results. Civita Castellana is an ancient and picturesque city with about sixteen thousand inhabitants located forty miles north of Rome, in the district of Northern Lazio.  The region, with its many attractions, has provided subjects for many painters, including Corot, Ingres, and Turner.

Scott Kelley will lead a gallery tour as part of the Portland Museum of Art’s Artist Intervention Series on Friday, July 11th, from 5:00 – 7:00 PM. The artist will focus upon some of the lesser-known works in the museums collection, including paintings by early American portraitist John Brewster, Jr., Hudson River School painter Frederick Church, Winslow Homer, Marsden Hartley and others. Admission is free, and you can find more information by visiting the museum website at portlandmuseum.org, or visit the artists Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Scott-Kelley-Studio/96682848316.

Eric Hopkins has written an article for Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors Magazine, July 2014 edition, “Illusions of Grandeur, Adventures in a Boston Whaler shaped n artist’s world vision.”

Challenge yourself to see Maine with a fresh perspective.

Maine has long been a photographer’s paradise. From season to season, the landscapes change dramatically and offer many visual delights. This workshop will challenge photographers to see their environment through fresh eyes, using Maine as the backdrop. We will look beyond clichés, extract the tranquility and discover exciting new ways to photograph the world around us.

We are now able to share Connie’s artist talk at the Rockland Strand on June 7, 2014. Her topic springs from people asking why she has not taught for a long time and why she decided to teach this summer in Italy. Connie shows images of her own art from childhood, student days and current work in conjunction with her exhibit at the Dowling Walsh Gallery. She talks about various ways to learn and teach that exist in schools, colleges, museums, workshops, copying masters, self taught artists, apprenticeships, etc.

An excerpt: “My figurative work is the most personal of all my work. It’s where I allow myself to explore ideas that interest me and really get deeply into them. The scenes come out of my imagination and, because they did not actually happen, the events and people are not bound by time. Sometimes in a single painting I’ll put two figures that are really one person at two different ages, or several figures that lived a hundred years apart. I like it to look as if it were actually happening, or could have happened, so it’s important to me to get the perspective and lighting and viewpoint consistent. It’s all in the service of the concept.”

David Graeme Baker‘s painting, Vacationland, graces the cover of Cornell University’s Literary magazine, EPOCH, in the current issue.

“Guy Taplin’s work is now instantly recognisable. Evolving from a combination of nature’s accidents and his own eye for the comic grace of his subject matter, each of his ‘birds’ is a rare creature. Scouring the shoreline near his home, Guy gathers washed-up driftwood, boat parts and other flotsam, which most of us would overlook (or even avoid), but to Guy, spell pure inspiration.”

As with my people portraits, I seek to reveal, in a single frame, the complex lives of trees—including their hardships and tragedies.” Floating against a background of hand-applied gold leaf, individual trees or groups of them are portrayed in an often hazy atmosphere of uncertain depth. Some of the trees spread their crowns protectively, some are misshapen by natural or human force, while others seem to exude an aura of kindly authority, and still others appear bent by sadness. Referencing the ancient use of gold in sacred imagery, Tenneson’s photographs possess the aura of icons and project an undeniable mystery.

Artists Bo Bartlett and Betsy Eby set off to make a film about seeing. They travel the country stumbling upon art sites, characters and luminaries. But then the unexpected happens sending their adventure into unforeseen territory. And the clear becomes unclear. The visible world, a strain to see. A moving meditation, SEE, delivers the beauty of America through the eyes of two artists determined to see art in the everyday. The movie invites us to open our eyes anew and see the beauty and wonder in the world around us.

“You have said that: “True artists seek the truth at all costs.” What kinds of truths are you seeking in your most recent works?

I want to make paintings like I’ve never seen before. The current show in Maine has two distinct bodies of work. Both represent fields that I feel are somewhat unexplored. The figure paintings, many of my wife, painter Betsy Eby, posing with her friends, are intimate portraits. I know what I’m doing. And I’m well aware that they are dancing on an edge. They could easily be considered decadent, lewd and immoral from the right side of the aisle and patriarchal, misogynistic and sexist from the left.

Susan Headley Van Campen’s June 2013 show of watercolors at Hirschl & Adler was reviewed by Wall Street International.

Both artist and naturalist, Susan Van Campen draws her inspiration from the world out of doors – from the sloping fields unfolding outside her window and from the shapes and shades of the flowers that she herself has tended. Nature is her subject and she is keenly aware that it is fleeting and ever-changing. 

Connie Hayes was named a Fellow at the Vermont Studio Center, where she will join a select group of artists and writers in the month of April for intensive exploration within a dynamic culture of creativity across several disciplines. The Vermont Studio Center was founded nearly three decades ago in the town of Johnson to offer stimulation and opportunity among peers established in their careers.  In addition to the Fellows, several students also attend the residency program at the Center.  Connie will be joining an illustrious list of many celebrated writers and painters among Fellows who have participated over the years.

The work of Maine-based artist Greta Van Campen provides an interesting counterpoint to that of Stinson and Kitchel. Although Van Campen’s work also draws on the great Western tradition of exploration, she approaches the subject as both a young painter and as a non-Westerner. Where Stinson and Kitchel know the region intimately, Van Campen is viewing it with fresh eyes — and usually from behind the wheel of a car. Over the course of two years encompassing six trips to each of the 50 states, Van Campen traveled by plane, train and automobile, logging 50,000 miles on her car, sending sketches to her 86 sponsors, bartering art- work for mechanical repairs and adopting a puppy along the way. 

David Vickery was featured in Carl Little’s article, “Painter & Place: No Getting Over Monhegan”, in the April 2013 Maine Home + Design. In the article, Carl remarks that David has “embraced a style that he has come to call ‘precise realism’: a close reading of motifs, including architectural subjects that often have a psychological edge.”

Cig Harvey will be exhibiting her work at Firecat studio in Chicago from February 22 – March 23, 2013. Join us there on Friday, February 22 for a book signing at 5pm and the opening reception from 7 to 10pm.

Designing Benches: Farnsworth Competition Finalists opens at the Messler Gallery of the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship on Friday, January 25, 2013. Join us there for the opening reception from 5-7pm.

Designing Benches showcases the top fifteen entries in a design competition co-sponsored by the Farnsworth Museum and the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship. The challenge was to design new gallery benches for the Farnsworth. In all, 44 entrants submitted 73 designs.

Visitors to the Messler Gallery may “test drive” the benches, while viewing a concurrent exhibition of seating themed Maine paintings. Participating arts include Dowling Walsh Gallery artists Stephen Hodecker, Anna B. McCoy, John W. McCoy, Connie Hayes, David Vickery, and Tollef Runquist. Preview their work here: /private-viewing/bench-exhibit.

The Messler Gallery is located on the campus of the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, at the corner of Route 90 and Mill Street in Rockport, Maine. Gallery hours are 9am-5pm, Monday through Friday and 10am-4pm Saturday. Exhibit runs January 25 – April 17, 2013.

David Graeme Baker has written an article for Artists on Art magazine, which is featured in this quarter’s issue.

We are pleased to announce, Dowling Walsh Gallery is now formally representing the work of Eric Hopkins. Eric will have a solo exhibition at the gallery, summer of 2014.

Eric is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design and has taught at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and Pilchuck Glass School. He has exhibited at the Farnsworth Art Museum, Portland Museum of Art, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Waterfall Arts Center, University of Maine Museum of Art, and a number of galleries nationally. Eric’s paintings and glass are held in many private and public collections, including the Farnsworth Art Museum, Portland Museum of Art, Bates College Museum of Art, University of Southern Maine, Corning Museum of Glass, Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, and the U.S. Department of State Art in Embassies: Bahamas, Pakistan, Philippines, and the West Indies. Eric will be dedicating more of his time to traveling and painting America’s national parks and western landscape.

We are pleased to announce, Eric Green of Belfast, Maine is now represented by Dowling Walsh Gallery. Eric will have a solo show at the gallery in 2014. Eric Green received a full scholarship from RISD at the age of sixteen. After attending the school for a week, he left to ride freights across the country, spending four years on the road. In the years since, he has become accomplished author and artist.

“My intent with the birds is to portray them formally, as if they were 19th century portraits and the birds wanted to look their best. I also pay attention to the expression to bring out a personality. As I learned from human portraits, if the eyes are drawn a bit larger than life, it gives a more meaningful look. The birds can be seen as guardians of an unspoiled world; I invent the backgrounds, which all interconnect through their horizons, and exclude anything man-made.”

Cig Harvey was featured in the British Sunday Times for her honor as a top ten candidate for the international photography prize for women, the Prix Virginia.

Tollef Runquist will be exhibiting his new work in a benefit show for the Camden Public Library. The proceeds from this show will directly benefit creative programs at the library.

Please join us for an opening reception with the artist on Saturday, November 10th at 2pm in the Jean Picker Room at the Camden Public Library, 55 Main Street, Camden, ME 04843.

The exhibit will be open during regular library hours through November.

Cig Harvey’s You Look at Me Like An Emergency, is the subject of an in-depth review in PDN magazine’s November 2012 issue, and her photograph, White Witch Moth, is the striking cover image.

October 10, 2012 – Greta Van Campen was interviewed by The Courier-Gazette and The Camden Herald in conjunction with her show “Painting America,” on view at Dowling Walsh Gallery until November 12.

Jacobus Baas is feature in Maine Home + Design magazine’s October 2012 issue. In the article, “Basic Landscape, Exquisitely Refined” by Britta Konau, Baas is highlighted along with Lois Dodd and Martha Burkert.

“Baas is always searching for what he considers ‘natural beauty that people might miss in their rush through everyday life,’ playing particular attention to how light strikes surfaces. His compositions are condensed into just a few elements, imbuing the images with a sense of serenity… Baas’s brushwork too seems to abbreviate nature into feathery forms.”

Words that come to mind when thinking about the art of Alexandra Tyng: intelligence, knowledge and talent; or perhaps independence, perception and determination. Tyng, 58, stands out among contemporary representational painters for her comprehensive grasp of art history, and for the inquiring mind that infuses her compositions. A mature artist at the top of her game, she knows what she wants—and how to achieve it in paint. Tyng reached her current confident, accomplished style by unconventional means, shunning art school and bucking the tide of Abstract Expressionism in the 1970s by becoming a realist painter.

David Graeme Baker’s sold out exhibition at Dowling Walsh Gallery received high praise in The Free Press review by Britta Konau.

An excerpt: “Baker is practicing a masterful economy of painterly attention. Faces can be precisely detailed, but other areas thinly painted and only loosely descriptive, just articulated enough to be believable. The viewer thus receives just what is needed to complete the image in our eyes and the story in our mind… His intensely staged and choreographed scenarios project stillness and suspension of time when change is exactly their theme, evoking archetypes of emotional development. Composition, lighting, colors, placement of the figures – all seems very controlled, in keeping with the careful execution of the work.”

An excerpt: 

Tell us something about your work.
It’s precise realism, or naturalism, of local scenes and interiors with an eye to contemporary relevance and a connection between the natural and man-made.

What’s the best part of being a full time, working artist?
Being able to do what I want, keep my own hours, pursue personal, eccentric ideas and have the resulting work appreciated.

Paintings and linocuts of boats, boatmaking and shipyards
September 7 – September 29, 2012

Join us for a series of special events for James Dodds from England:

Artist talk and book signing
Tonight, Saturday, September 8, 4pm

Scott Kelley‘s show, WHALE, currently on exhibit at Dowling Walsh Gallery, was featured in the American Art Collector’s August 2012 issue.

Cig Harvey was featured in a wonderful 12 page spread in Aesthetica, the cutting edge European art and culture magazine, for their August/September 2012 issue.

Connie Hayes‘s artist talk is now available online! The illustrated talk, “Photography as Sketchbook: Exploring Gesture”, was given Tuesday, July 17, 2012 at The Strand Theater in Rockland, Maine.

Painting and photography have long been richly intertwined. In her talk, Connie describes how and why she uses photography in her process; photography’s relation to her paintings; and the power and limitation of the camera and other optical devices.

In conjunction with Connie Hayes exhibition, “Abandon, Absorption, and Entrancement,” at Dowling Walsh Gallery from July 6 – July 29, 2012.

Rob Pollien’s current exhibit at Dowling Walsh received high praise in The Free Press’s review by Britta Konau.

An excerpt: “Pollien’s work has an edge to it that is in keeping with the raw forces of nature his paintings capture. They are full of inner drama. None of the paintings seem to have come easily to Pollien, which I consider the hallmark of a deeply self-reflective and utterly serious artist. These paintings introduce us to a kind of beauty that goes far beyond what is visible to the eye.”

Join us JULY 20th, 5 – 8 PM for a special preview of the exhibition and an evening with the artist, Anne Emmanuelle Marpeau from France’s Breton coast.

Anne-Emmanuelle Marpeau calls her artworks ex-votos. Literally translated as “from the vow made,” ex-votos were traditionally placed in churches to seek grace or give thanks. Marpeau’s pieces are offerings, story boxes, telling tales of events gone past, and of events imagined. Look into these boxes closely. You will see people working and celebrating life. They show life on the coast in the days before gasoline and electricity. They show that the way of the sea was hazardous—and still is. You will see models being sailed, dories and peapods being rowed, boat builders, fishermen, lighthouse keepers, lifesaving crews, and families.

Connie Hayes will give an illustrated talk, “Photography as Sketchbook: Exploring Gesture”, at 4pm, Tuesday, July 17 at The Strand Theater, 345 Main Street, Rockland, ME, one block from the Gallery. Painting and photography have long been richly intertwined. Connie will describe how and why she uses photography in her process; photography’s relation to her paintings; and the power and limitation of the camera and other optical devices.

The talk is free and open to the public. Connie Hayes will be at the gallery after the talk to answer any additional questions. The gallery will be open until 6pm after the talk.

Hayes’s new work examines portraits, people and interactions with continued emphasis on color and gesture.

Tenneson’s new work fuses photographs with gold, combining film from the high-tech present with the ancient craft of gold leaf. The exhibition of mixed media tree images transports the viewer to new realms, inspiring them to see the natural world in new and surprising ways.

Connie Hayes‘s show, “Abandon, Absorption, and Entrancement,” was reviewed in Fine Art Connoisseur magazine and American Art Collector magazine this month.

An excerpt from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine’s August 2012 article, “Hayes has indeed been watching closely as the children around her interact with each other and with adults. Occasionally unnerving but always compellingly composed and expertly crafted, these canvases evoke Porter in a darker mood, the pulsing energy of Eric Fischl’s adult scenes, and the not-always-flattering insights delivered by Jack Beal and Alice Neel. Though these were clearly made by the same hand that has given us so many years of landscapes and interiors, there is a different energy here. It will be fascinating to see what Maine’s children, and collectors, make of them this summer.” To download a full copy of the article, click here: Connie Hayes Fine Art Connoisseur.

An excerpt from American Art Collector magazine’s July 2012 article, “What Hayes saw when observing these children was an ability to become completely absorbed in a moment – whether it be while eating, playing or reading…” To download a full copy of the article, click here: Connie Hayes American Art Collector.

An excerpt: “The roles enacted throughout Emergency are quotidian meditations, common and remarkably graceful in their introspection… Through words and pictures Harvey has recorded an imaginative epic of unknowing, discovery, and deepening.”

LENSCRATCH’s interview with Cig Harvey came out today! The blogzine delves into Cig’s inspirations, creative process, her new book and upcoming projects.

Story telling has always been the primary inspiration for my pictures. I am big into the discipline of art and try to always make work even when I don’t feel like it. I put my secrets, hopes and concerns in my work. The subject matter and formal concerns of color, light and frame has always been the device to get to the story itself. I want my photographs to be a jolt.  They explore a magic in the world while having one foot very much placed in reality.

Cig Harvey’s YOU LOOK AT ME LIKE AN EMERGENCY is a visual autobiography exploring the photographer’s central relationships over the course of more than a decade. Through rich, vibrant photographs and startlingly revealing writing, Cig transforms quotidian experiences that reference time and place, creating totems that mark key moments in her life. As much a map of one woman’s emotional life as it is a catalog of psychological archetypes, YOU LOOK AT ME LIKE AN EMERGENCY takes the viewer on a literal and metaphorical journey that deals with rejection, hope, indecision, strength, loss, and love to finally find a place called home. In seventy-four gorgeously colored photographs and seventeen personally written vignettes, EMERGENCY conveys the universal quest for personal identity and place in the world.

Join us tonight for our art openings and book release party!

Cig Harvey will be signing books for the official release of You Look At Me Like An Emergency from 5-7pm, Friday, June 1. You Look At Me Like An Emergency is a visual autobiography through seventy-four luminous photographs and startlingly honest writing. As much a map of one woman’s emotional life as it is a catalog of psychological archetypes, You Look At Me Like An Emergency takes the viewer on a literal and metaphorical journey that deals with rejection, hope, strength, loss and love to finally find a place called home.

James Dodds was featured in the June 2012 issue of the UK’s select Coast magazine.

In the article, Dodds talks about the inception of the boat paintings he has become famous for. “The boats came about because about ten years ago I was offered a big show … and had the lovely opportunity of a big space to fill. I had this problematic painting that was full of all the troubles of my life, and I painted a big boat over the top of it. I let go of all the justifications of my earlier paintings, and it was so enjoyable. It said all the things I wanted to say. and it brought the two sides of my life – boat builder and painter – together. It felt like coming home.”

Rodney Hunt is a master of antique chairs. He has crafted a range of miniature replicas using sustainably sourced wood, selected for its fine grain and high quality to allow for intricate detailing. These delightful chairs are brought to life with such woods as English Walnut, Yew, Box, Cherry, Laburnum and fruit wood. Hunt uses traditional finishing methods and authentic stains, oils, polish and waxes. These time-tested methods give the wood a rich, lustrous appearance that improves over time. The chairs are made to a scale of 1:4, sized to enjoy as a personal collection and to accommodate the detail necessary to make exact miniature copies. Rodney Hunt hand carves each chair personally to exacting standards. Each miniature is stamped with type and edition numbers and constructed in a wood to suit the design.

Cig Harvey‘s new book, You Look at Me Like an Emergency, received high praise in the UK’s top newspaper, The Independent, in Sunday’s edition. 

“A girl clutching a birdhouse on an evening lit by fireflies; another with a rhubarb leaf on her head; a woman clinging to a buoy in a flat blue sea: welcome to the weird, almost René Magritte-like inner world of the US-based photographer Cig Harvey. You Look at Me Like an Emergency is a visual autobiography in which her brightly coloured, appealingly composed but slightly off-kilter photographs are accompanied by snatches of journal jottings. She regularly poses in her own work, but her subjects are often photographed from behind, or with their faces obscured. The effect is that her work is somehow both intimate and unknowable.”

Rodney Hunt is a master of antique chairs. He has crafted a range of miniature replicas using sustainably sourced wood, selected for its fine grain and high quality to allow for intricate detailing. These delightful chairs are brought to life with such woods as English Walnut, Yew, Box, Cherry, Laburnum and fruit wood. Hunt uses traditional finishing methods and authentic stains, oils, polish and waxes. These time-tested methods give the wood a rich, lustrous appearance that improves over time. The chairs are made to a scale of 1:4, sized to enjoy as a personal collection and to accommodate the detail necessary to make exact miniature copies. Rodney Hunt hand carves each chair personally to exacting standards. Each miniature is stamped with type and edition numbers and constructed in a wood to suit the design.

The College of the Arts at Columbus State University is uniquely positioned to create a learning opportunity like none other in the country. American artist and Columbus native Bo Bartlett is donating his archives, artwork and many major iconic paintings to the University. These works, along with additional donated artwork from personal and private collections, constitute the core holdings of  The Bo Bartlett Center.

The Camden Snow Bowl is currently raising funds for the redevelopment of the Ragged Mountain Recreation Area. The money raised will go towards creating a new ski lodge, improving the road and trail access, parking, and utility infrastructure.  New lifts, an expanded beginner area and additional snowmaking are also part of the plan.  The Town of Camden has conditionally agreed to a $2 million bond to cover the final 30% of the project after the initial funds are secured. As of New Years 2012, over half of the fundraising goal has been met. Dowling Walsh Gallery will donate 20% of the proceeds from this show to benefit the Camden Snow Bowl and Ragged Mountain Recreation Foundation redevelopment project. Artwork has been priced to encourage buying for maximum benefit to the Camden Snow Bowl. A selection of this work is on display at the gallery now through April 28th, 2012.

Maine Home + Design magazine is highlighting five of our artists, David Graeme Baker, Colin Page, Jacob Bond Hessler, Connie Hayes and David Vickery in their April 2012 art issue. The article presents 2012’s upcoming exhibitions for the latest work by Maine artists: Show Stoppers, April 2012.

Cig Harvey’s photographs were featured on the front page of the Portland Press Herald’s “Audience” section in March 12th’s Maine Sunday Telegram. Her photographs are currently on display in a group photography exhibit at the University of Southern Maine, entitled “The Myths” from March 2 – April 14, 2012. Her work in the show was praised in The Portland Press Herald’s article as “evocative.”

Bo Bartlett is an American original. A realist painter with a deliciously surreal touch, the Columbus, Georgia-born artist was a protégé and life-long friend of Andrew Wyeth. His haunting and epic tableaus evoke a Hopper-like sense of longing and mystery combined with a Lynchian-cocktail of menace, beauty and stranger-then-fiction reality. A natural traveler with an entire planet of subject matter to pick from, it might surprise some to learn that Bartlett chooses to spend several months each year painting in the modest Columbus, Georgia, home he grew up in -- in fact to paint in the very bedroom that was his as a child.

Cig Harvey was recently short-listed for the 2012 Prix {Virginia}, the international photography prize for women. The jury selected Cig Harvey as one of the top ten candidates among 434 candidates from 45 countries. The jury was comprised of Monica Allende, Picture Editor, The Sunday Times Magazine; Sylvia Schildge, photographer, visual artist; Lucy Conticello, director of Photography, M – Le magazine du Monde; Jacques Audiard, filmmaker; Benjamin Klintoe, 2012 graduate of The Ecole nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs; Christian Caujolle, teacher, independent curator; Agnès Sire, director of the Fondation Cartier- Bresson; Xavier Barral, éditeur. The top ten candidates’ work will be presented on the Prix {Virginia} page, with new postings every other month from January 2013 to the next edition of the Prix {Virginia} in 2014.

A classic selection of paintings by well known contemporary Maine inspired artists is now on view at the Camden Public Library.  This show of beautiful Maine landscapes are available at a signifiant value and the proceeds will directly benefit creative programs at the Camden Public Library.  The exhibit will be open during regular library hours through February in the Picker Room