The Canvas

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.

Transcending Nature

THE CANVAS - OCTOBER 2008

By Suzette McAvoy

Michael H. Lewis, Alan Bray, and Dennis Pinette

For artist Michael Lewis, painting is “an invitation to extend the boundaries of ordinary reality…an invitation to search for harmony, equilibrium, and perhaps transcendence.” Over the past thirty years, he has been creating evocative landscapes that transport the viewer beyond the particulars of the external world to a timeless inner space that is at once more personal, emotional, and spiritual.

Form & Figure

THE CANVAS - SEPTEMBER 2008

By Carl Littl

The allure of figurative painting in Maine

While Maine is acclaimed for its landscape art, the figure has always been present. Women in wide summer hats seated on rocky ledge in Childe Hassam’s Appledore canvases, fishermen hauling the “big dory” in a George Bellows Monhegan painting, a nude with wheelbarrow in one of Lois Dodd’s Women at Work pieces [MH+D, April 2008]—it is a remarkable and wonderfully varied tradition.
The three painters showcased this issue are committed to the figure. The lobsterman in Robert Shillady’s portrait quietly paints his buoys, while a very different hauler of traps defends his territory in Bo Bartlett’s bold image. Jessica Gandolf’s ball players of the past evoke legendary feats on the diamond.
There couldn’t be three more divergent approaches to the figure, or three more compelling artists to engage us in tribute

The Challenge of the Ever-Changing Sea

THE CANVAS - AUGUST 2008

By Suzette McAvoy

Wissemann-Widrig, Fishman and Irvine

Undoubtedly the richest vein in Maine art has long been paintings of the sea. The gauntlet was laid down in 1844 by Thomas Cole, the leader of the American landscape movement, when he first ventured to Mount Desert Island and described the coastline as “ironbound” with “threatening crags, and dark caverns in which the sea thunders.” From that moment to this day, artists have come to Maine to accept the challenge asserted by the sea.

The Night, the Saint, and the City

THE CANVAS - JULY 2008

By Carl Little

Jacquette, Goodwin, and Solotaire

A Wal-Mart Flyover with Yvonne Jacquette
Day or night, the world looks different from high in the air. For thirty-five years, painter Yvonne Jacquette has focused her art on the aerial view, flying in airplanes or scaling the heights of tall buildings to create her striking images of cities and countryside, harbors and islands. From New York City to Japan, from San Francisco to Maine, she has reenergized and redefined the concept of the bird’s-eye view, lending it mystery, emotion, and unusual beauty.