The Canvas
Numinous Skies
THE CANVAS- June 2010 | by Suzette McAvoy
Colin Barclay, Sean Beavers & Lisa Creed
“He drew forth a phrase from his treasure and spoke it softly to himself: A day of dappled seaborne clouds.” -James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Colin Barclay, Storm on the Barrens, 2007, oil on paper laid to panel, 24” x 24”Fertile Ground
THE CANVAS- May 2010 | by Suzette McAvoy
Ingrid Ellison, Mary Barnes & John Knight
“The beautiful is in nature, and it is encountered under the most diverse forms of reality. Once it is found it belongs to art, or rather to the artist who discovers it.” -Gustave Courbet
Mary Barnes, Aquatic Edge, 2009, graphite, ink on Mylar and paper, 22" x 22”, private collection
Defining The Edge
Created Worlds
CRAFT OF MAINE- April 2010 | by Suzette McAvoy
Sara Crisp, Meg Brown Payson & Penelope Jones
“The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.” -Henry Miller
Sara Crisp, Untitled (Wheel-Leaf), 2008, encaustic, lotus, ligularia leaf, mica on wood panel, 36” x 36”
Reflecting Luminosity
THE CANVAS- March 2010 | by Suzette McAvoy
Joellyn Duesberry, Jessica Stammen & Kristin Malin
“You have the sky overhead giving one light; then the reflected light from whatever reflects; then the direct light of the sun; so that, in the blending and suffusing of these several luminations, there is no such thing as a line to be seen anywhere.” - Winslow Homer
Joellyn Duesberry - Waterfilled Quarry, Maine, 2006, oil on linen, 36” x 48”
Material Matters
THE CANVAS-Jan/Feb 2010 | by Suzette McAvoy
Tom Paiement, Stew Henderson & William Manning
“In a successful painting everything is integral…all the parts belong to the whole. If you remove an aspect or element you are removing its wholeness.” -Richard Diebenkorn
Entropy Aftermath: Tribute 1, mixed media, 13 1/8” x 13 1/8” | Tom Paiement
The World Down Under
THE CANVAS-Nov/Dec 2009 | by Suzette McAvoy
Richard Keen, Dudley Zopp & Hannah Bureau
“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” -Albert Einstein
Geologics XIV, 2006, oil on canvas, 40” x 24” | Dudley Zopp
Autumn’s Coat of Colors
THE CANVAS-October 2009 | by Suzette McAvoy
George Bayliss, Jennifer Whiting & Henry Isaacs
“Color is the key. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with its many chords. The artist is the hand that, by touching this or that key, sets the soul vibrating automatically.” -Robert Louis Stevenson
Sedgwick, Autumn, 2007, oil on canvas, 30” x 40” George Bayliss
Nature’s Cathedrals
THE CANVAS-September 2009
by Suzette McAvoy
Janice Anthony, R. Scott Baltz & Jane Dahmen
Capturing the Color of Light
THE CANVAS-August 2009
by Suzette McAvoy
Alexandra Tyng, Louise Bourne & Thomas Paquette
The Language of Abstraction
THE CANVAS-June 2009
by Suzette McAvoy
Joshua Ferry, Mark Wethli & Grace DeGennaro
Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot physically see with his eyes…to perceive beyond the tangible, to extract the infinite out of the finite. -Arshile Gorky
Gardens of Earthly Delight
THE CANVAS-May 2009
by Suzette McAvoy
Among the changing months, May stands confest The Sweetest, And in fairest colors dressed. -James Thomson
Dynamic Tension
Our human collaboration with nature is at the core of Avy Claire’s art. As a professional landscape designer and artist, she is passionately concerned with our imprint on the environment and its effect over time. “I am interested in the dynamic tension between human mechanistic activity and nature’s deeper order,” she says. “I call this intersection ‘The Garden.’”
The Garden is fertile ground for Claire’s art, which variously takes the form of painting, drawing on Mylar, digital photography, or—increasingly—installations. “Lately, I feel that my medium will be whatever it takes to accomplish what I want to do,” she says.
The Bleak and the Beautiful
THE CANVAS-April 2009
by Carl Little
Mary Aro, Eric Aho & Dozier Bell
Supported in part by a bequest from the painter William Thon and his wife Helen, late of Port Clyde, the Portland Museum of Art’s juried biennial has developed a reputation for the remarkable spectrum of aesthetics it puts on display. The 2009 biennial—the museum’s sixth—is no exception, presenting painters, photographers, sculptors, and new-media artists who are exploring varieties of artistic expression.
The Month of Expectation
THE CANVAS-March 2009
by Suzette McAvoy
Susan Headley van Campen, Monica Kelly & T. Allen Lawson
A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period—
When March is scarcely here
-Emily Dickinson
Exalting the Ordinary
THE CANVAS-JAN/FEB 2009
by Suzette McAvoy
Colin Page, Denise Remy & Vivian Russe
“Cézanne made a living thing out of a teacup, or rather in a teacup he realized the existence of something alive. He raised still life to such a point that it ceased to be inanimate. He painted these things as he painted human beings, because he was endowed with the gift of divining the inner life in everything.” Wassily Kandinsky
Transcending the Everyday
THE CANVAS - NOV/DEC 2008
by Carl Little
Alison Rector, Jill Hoy, & DeWitt Hardy
When describing an artist’s connection to the landscape, the term “a sense of place” is often used to convey that ineffable personal resonance that elevates a work of art above the merely descriptive or picturesque.
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