The Atrium Gallery at University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn College (USM) is hosting an art exhibition, “Industrial Maine: Our Other Landscape, March-June 2018”; a group of 2D and 3d Art works. USM placed a ‘call for art,’ seeking artists whose work is focused on Maine’s industrial landscape. I have not ‘focused’ on art of Maine’s industrial landscape. I returned to Maine in 2012 from an extended painting residence in Mexico, and established as a goal for my paintings in Maine, to seek to express Maine’s true essence. For I paint ‘Maine‘ as unforgiving, the land, sea and sky as uncompromising, demanding your daily awareness, and testing your ability to live with nature as a constant in your life.
Here I am, living in an old mill building in the Biddeford warren of ‘old’ Mill Buildings, and it would do me some good to read about the history and people who worked in these structures and seek possible examples right around me, and nearby, that ‘spoke’ to me of the age of mills in Biddeford and the surrounding communities. And, so, there, you have it; My series: Mill Paintings Biddeford, Maine 2017.
I decided that I would work on this call for work, and submit my work to guest curator Janice L Moore and retired curator, Robert Holman, of Atrium Gallery. The show appealed to me as an artistic challenge. Furthermore, it would drag me away from the abstract work I did in the 2017 series: ROMA: AD 476: The Fall of the Roman Empire: Is the USA Subject to a ‘Fall?
Paintings above are not all available for purchase, Top row of images, looking from Left to Right: First one is for sale: Old Grist Mill, you frame , image 18x 26, paper 22 x 30: Price; $1200; Third one is for sale: Along the Mighty Saco River; this framed, 18 x 26 image, 22 x 30 framed: Price $1500.
Lower row of images, looking from Left to Right: Second one is for sale: Biddeford Textile; 18 x26 image 22 x 30 framed: Price: $1500 Third one is for sale: Water Wheel Grist Mill, not framed, image 18 x 26, paper 22 x 30; Price: $1200
Ryan Fecteau, former Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives displayed Painting Lower role of paintings, first one was at the Speaker’s office in Augusta while he was Speaker; he owns this painting.