Pop Up Artist Christopher O’Connor

Posted on by Maine Art

Featured Artist, Christopher O’Connor is the guest artist for Pop Up beginning Tuesday, July 3  through Monday, July 9. Read on to learn more about his inspiration, his process, and his work.

July 3-July 9

Ever since I was a child I wanted to be an artist. There was always something magical, alchemical about the process of conjuring up an image with the simplest of means. I loved how colors could be mixed and in the process create new colors. How brushes and pens could be wielded to create whole new worlds. How when you didn’t have the words to express yourself you had color and shape and light and shade. Drawing and painting seemed like the most natural thing in the world to do.

Over the years I have found myself drawn to a diverse range of artists and styles. I have played and experimented with many and in the process I have come to understand that the artworks that I am most captivated by all have similar qualities – a strong compositional sense, layered coloring, a vibrant surface quality, restrained intensity – add to these the dogged determination to work on a piece until it is finished and you have works of art that are enduring and endlessly engaging. It is with these considerations that I approach my practice of making paintings.

With my current body of work, my intention is to create works that elicit a quiet sense of balance and calm in the viewer. Pictorial compositions that contain a solid architectonic syntax have always made an impact on me. Through the use of vibrant coloring and rigorously constructed compositions, I strive to compose paintings that conjure up an immediate visual impact, one that slowly gives way to engagement with the detail and structure implicit in each painting. It is through the surface quality of the paint and within the distilled composition of the painting that the intention of my work is revealed.

O’Connor will be showing his work at Pop Up on Maine Art Hill at 5 Chase Hill Rd. in Kennebunk from July 3 to July 9. The gallery is open every day at 10 am. For more info about Christopher O’Connor and his work, follow this link to his website. www.christopheroconnorpainting.com

Pop Up Artist Chris Ploof

Posted on by Maine Art

Due to unforeseen circumstances Chris Ploof will not be joining us at Pop Up this summer.

We encourage you to read on to learn more about his inspiration, his process, and his work.

Hailing from a small town in Massachusetts, award-winning master jeweler Chris Ploof was once a skinny boy lurking around the local living history museum, watching awestruck as the craftspeople manipulated what had previously seemed unyielding: glass, tin, iron.

After traveling the world trying hands-on careers that spoke to his historical influences and technical skills, Chris found himself back on his boyhood path, attempting to make a forge improvised by a 55-gallon drum, some fire bricks, and a hairdryer. Eventually, his knowledge seeking lead him to jewelry making classes. At last, he was home.

Chris has studied with many well-known artists and apprenticed under a master goldsmith. He has an insatiable curiosity and drive that lead him down long roads even after the challenges at hand have been met.

The Santa Fe Symposium has chosen Chris twice to receive the Industry Leader Award, He has a series of instructional videos through Interweave, his work is on the cover of Showcase 500 Rings: New Directions in Art Jewelry (Lark, 2012) and in countless other publications, and he travels frequently as a consultant to the jewelry industry. His studio is located in Massachusetts, where he works with a carefully chosen, fun team of like-minded talent.

“I love exploring new techniques and materials, especially pushing the envelope of current and traditional techniques. Challenges always seem to lead down long roads even after they have been resolved and spawn future ideas and designs. ‘Impossible’ is only a temporary condition.”

For more info about Ploof and his work, follow this link to his website. www.chrisploof.com

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Pop Up Artist Cynthia Woehrle

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Featured Artist, Cynthia Woehrle is the guest artist for Pop Up beginning Tuesday, July 17 through Monday, July 23. Read on to learn more about her inspiration, her process, and her work.

July 17 – July 23

Landscape in oil is the medium in which my artistic themes are expressed. Each landscape represents the memory of an emotion and my aim is to present a scene that has a ground but also has an ephemeral and floating feeling to evoke a dreamlike memory. I am fixated on the subtleties of the atmosphere, which I layer in glazes of paint. Each work develops its own temperament; some complicated and heavy, others light, loose and confident.

Contradiction is also a theme, associating lights and darks in the atmosphere with both positive and negative implications. For example, with darkness, there is an acknowledgment of the negative and an appreciation for its beauty and solace. Darkness symbolizes repression and withholding but at the same time, and importantly, darkness brings comfort and rest. Light, a symbol of hope and renewal, is a focal point that disrupts this rest. In depicting the sky, I can explore a full circle of human emotion through light and atmosphere.

The moon is a subject within the contradiction theme that I began exploring at a time of forced reaction about the meaning of life and death. Ever changing, the moon’s presence is mysterious and is often contradictory in symbolism. This makes the search for absolute truths impossible. There is always another answer, another perspective. Philosophers grasp at answers in an effort to understand life but all that is true is the journey and what is discovered along the way.

Woehrle will be showing her work at Pop Up on Maine Art Hill at 5 Chase Hill Rd. in Kennebunk from July 17 to July 23. The gallery is open every day at 10 am. For more info about Woehrle and her work, follow this link to her website. www.cynthiawoehrle.com

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Pop Up Artist Phil Laughlin

Posted on by Maine Art

Featured Artist, Phil Laughlin is the guest artist for Pop Up beginning Tuesday, July 10  through Monday, July 16. Read on to learn more about his inspiration, his process, and his work.

July 10-July 16

“The idea that man has a relationship with nature has been with us all along. What’s new is our understanding of the complexities and subtleties of that relationship and the role we play in that balance. When I observe a landscape subject with my 21st-century painter’s eyes, I am aware not only of how nature has shaped us but how we have had a reciprocal impact on nature.” Phil Laughlin

Phil Laughlin was born in the Finger Lakes region of New York.  Like most kids, he enjoyed drawing, but you wouldn’t have guessed from his childhood that art would become his passion.  At home, the idea of a career in the arts was never discussed.  School offered one art course in 12 years of public education.  The prevailing attitude was “Okay… We’ve checked the art box on the curriculum form, let’s move on to the real business of life.”

 

His academic strengths were math and science so it seemed like engineering would be a good course of study at college.  This seemingly straightforward plan collided with the social upheaval of the late 1960’s. In the second year at SUNY Stony Brook, he began to question his career path in the counterculture-style of the times.  Doing something in the creative arts seemed more meaningful than building rockets, so he switched majors to studio arts.

When he graduated from Worcester Museum Art School, Abstract Impressionism was relinquishing the spotlight.  Several other art movements emerged in rapid succession.  The ones exploring newfound notions of realism were of most interest.  He moved to New York City and continued to paint.  The need for employment pushed him to study applied arts and work as a graphic designer.

Creatively, commercial design work wasn’t very fulfilling, but the opportunities presented by the city itself and the exposure Manhattan offered to new ideas and new standards of artistic professionalism were their own reward.  World-class galleries and museums were in abundance.  He passionately consumed it all.

In 1986, Phil moved his family to the beautiful green mountain state of Vermont.  At the same time, desktop computers hit the scene.  After a period of experimentation, he found himself gravitating towards illustration software, rendering product, and technical subjects.  Painting time had to share with work time while he raised his family.  Children grew, moved out, and he gradually rebalanced his schedule to once again favor landscape painting.

Along the way, he discovered the rich tradition of New England painting built by generations of artists.  Casting aside the last bit of guilt over leaving the formal concerns of modern abstraction behind, he joined other contemporary artists working with and extending that tradition.

Currently, he paints local scenes from his rural home in Williston, Vermont.

Laughlin will be showing his work at Pop Up on Maine Art Hill at 5 Chase Hill Rd. in Kennebunk from July 10 to July 16. The gallery is open every day at 10 am. For more info about Laughlin and his work, follow this link to his website. www.phillaughlinart.com

“Anything else you’re interested in is not going to happen if you can’t breathe the air and drink the water. Don’t sit this one out. Do something. You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of our planet.”- Carl Sagan

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Artist Julie Houck

Posted on by Maine Art

For 17 years, Julie Houck traveled the world as a professional location photographer. Working in many diverse locations throughout Europe, Asia and across the United States, provided Houck with an invaluable opportunity to increase her understanding of composition and the elements of design. Houck’s career as a photographer also instilled in her a fascination with the powerful effects of light.

In 1995, Houck decided to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a painter. “I decided to redirect and pursue what I truly loved.” As a contemporary landscape painter working in oils and encaustics, Houck aspires to capture not only the scene but also the moment and mood, relying on her study of the classical principles of directly observing color, light, and form in nature.

Houck shares, “As a contemporary landscape painter working in oils and encaustics, I aspire to convey not only the scene but also the moment and mood. The moment is fleeting but the painting allows us to live in that moment a bit longer, to linger, to reflect, to contemplate, to enjoy. I am inspired by the interplay of light on the landscape which is ever elusive and always changing. Painting softly allows me the opportunity to recreate that one particularly special moment when the land, light, and atmosphere seamlessly fuse.

Reflecting a serendipitous moment in time can be, however, a deceivingly slow and deliberate process. Both of the media I prefer, oils and encaustic, involve applying layers upon layers of paint.  And even though encaustic, painting with hot pigment-colored wax, is known as an especially process-intensive medium, every layer spontaneously changes the piece, so it evolves over time with a life of its own. I find this element of working intriguing.

Simultaneously, my work in oils is highly influenced by my early classical training– particularly the study of light on form.  Each landscape is painted in transparent layers with sometimes up to 40 layers of paint in order to recreate the subtle play of light on the landscape as well as to control the incremental changes in tonality.

As an artist, I approach each painting believing that it is not enough to paint the literal view. My goal is to also capture the essence of the landscape and hopefully connect you viscerally to that place and time.”

Houck has studied with contemporary realist painters at the Atelier of Classical Realism in San Francisco with David Hardy, the Academy of Fine Art in Seattle with Anthony Ryder and most recently, in France, at the L’Ecole Albert Defois with Ted Seth Jacobs. Houck studied en plein air with John Cosby, Kevin MacPherson, Don Demers, and Kim English.

Her landscapes reflect the influence of these artists as she hones her classical technique of painting in numerous transparent layers in order to recreate the subtle play of light on the scene. Her desire to capture the essence of the landscape is evolving into compositions dissolving into only the barest, most minimal components—the sky, horizon, and land.

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MAINE ART HILL: 9 GALLERIES, ONE STOP

Posted on by Maine Art

Maine Art opens a third gallery and breathes new life into their established yet growing brand.

After 20 years in business in the Kennebunks, Maine Art Paintings & Sculpture is opening a collection of seven micro galleries on Chase Hill Road representing high-quality artists and artisans. Launching in May, the custom framing and print shop will occupy one of the studios, while five spaces are reserved for annual renters and one for rotating weekly pop-ups.

“We offer these rentals to create a vibrant, ever-changing atmosphere and make new connections between artists, artisans, and collectors,” says gallery owner John Spain.

In conjunction with this new venture, the company has undergone a brand refresh to mirror its growth as a gallery destination. The new name—Maine Art Hill—is the umbrella for the company’s two existing brands while also incorporating its newest family member—Studios on Maine Art Hill. Maine Art Shows, a seasonal gallery open May through September will now be known as Shows on Maine Art Hill. The main year-round gallery, Maine Art Paintings and Sculpture, is now The Gallery on Maine Art Hill.

Maine Art Hill represents 35 of New England’s most established fine artists such as William B. Hoyt, Craig Mooney, David Witbeck, Rebecca Kinkead, Margaret Gerding, and Ellen Welch Granter. Maine Art Hill is the Northeast representation of Lyman Whitaker’s Kinetic Wind Sculptures, known and sold worldwide. Holly Ready kicks off their seven-show season starting May 26, 2018.

If you would like more information about this topic please contact Jessica Goodwin at 207-967-2803 or email at jessica@maine-art.com

Susan Wahlrab’s Journey Through Nature

Posted on by Maine Art

Radiance by Susan Wahlrab

Susan Wahlrab is one of the few watercolorists we represent at Maine Art. If you have read about or seen her work and her process, you understand just how amazing this woman is. Yet, like so many with such gifts, the need to grow and change is ever present. An artist knows perfection is impossible but never the less it always remains the goal.

Wahlrab embraces the change, she even welcomes it. Noted more for her large landscapes, she has begun to focus in on a more specific piece rather than the beauty of the whole.

“Experience has led me to a whole new chapter. This lifetime of infusing with the natural world created a big “A-ha moment.” All of nature is represented in a flower,” shares Wahlrab, still amazed by the realization. “There is abundant literature, folklore, and symbolism related to flowers. Most people have their own connection and stories with these amazing creations. Even those living in a concrete space, in a high-rise, in a busy city, find a way to bring flowers into their lives.”

For Wahlrab it is Nature drawn to Nature. “For, after all, we as humans are nature.”

Susan refers to a quote from Einstein. “‘Look into Nature and you will understand everything.” Her grandmother passed this wisdom on when she was a small child. “The way I made sense of the world around me was by drawing whatever happened each day,” Wahlrab remembers. “Living in the woods, my time was spent exploring the magical world of trees, plants, rocks and nearby ocean.”

Wahlrab’s entire artistic career has been inspired by this connection to the essence of the landscape. “The results are a part of, what is at times, a maddening process of attempting to describe walking between worlds of matter and energy, seeing where everything, as Einstein said, merges,” explains Wahlrab.

“These are big changes for me,” Wahlrab states simply. “I am moving from the large landscape to exploring the natural world through flowers. It is all so exciting, and it is going very well. I have received great responses just from the images I have shared. No one has seen them in the flesh yet!”

This change began last fall, and Susan knows it will continue to evolve. She will reveal the new work for the first time in two shows. One being at Maine Art Shows beginning July 21 and running for three consecutive weeks. Please let us know if you would like to be kept updated on the arrival of this new work.

Wahlrab herself sums it up best. “As in spending time in the company of nature, the more you look, listen and feel, the more you will understand.”

To read more about Susan Wahlrab and her work and process click here – Susan Wahlrab – Artist Insights and Stories

To see our present collection of her work, click here. Susan Wahlrab – Artist Page

 

 

First Lives – Margaret Gerding

Posted on by Maine Art

 

“I always knew I was an artist. I also knew I was blessed to have a large family who supported my path, which makes the struggles and challenges a little easier.”

View From Pier Road I View From Pier Road II

At nine years old Margaret Gerding’s father cleaned out a portion of their family garage in order to create a little studio space for her. However, even with unconditional support an artist often has to find other avenues first. Gerding has held many other jobs in her life which have allowed her to be where she is today.

“Starting right out of art college I worked in banking. I even started my MBA at Northeastern,” shares Gerding. “Next I moved to a position as art director for an advertising firm. Finally, I opened my own communications company.”

Parsons Beach Road View From Granite Point Yellow of the Goldenrod

The journey for Gerding was definitely linear in growth, but the line started in a very different place than where it ended.  The ten years Margaret spent in the corporate world gave her great insight as to who she is, and who she is not.

“Most days I woke up around four in the morning just to run directly to my studio in order to get a few hours in,” explains Gerding. “I had to go into the office and put in a ten or twelve hour day, so it was the best way for me to guarantee studio time.  The next day I woke up and did it over again.”

Gerding realizes this doesn’t make her special. “Many people put in long days, I know that. What it did show me was how much I wanted it. How much I wanted my art,” she says.  “I was good in my other world. I handled the high demand deadlines and working with clients to achieve goals, but I got nothing from it. I needed to paint every day. It was the priority for me.”

Measured Moments VI Measured Moments IV

When Gerding finally left the corporate world at age thirty-three, she had to find a new balance, the balance of being a single mother and artist. “It was actually much easier. Having my daughter nurtured my creative juices. I believe being around children reminded me what art is all about—the simple joy of expression,” shares Gerding.

Margaret was also a nanny, which she claims is a very convenient job for a single mother. It may have been convenient, but many of us know raising children, especially someone else’s, is not easy. Throughout the years she has also used her skills and talents as an artist to teach, which she still does today.

“I remember my daughter coming home from a playdate. She was so sad. She looked up at me and asked, ‘How come my friends’ homes don’t have studios?’ This simple statement was confirmation that I was doing it right.

To read more about Margaret Gerding, her work, and her stories, click this link. Margaret Gerding – Insights and Stories

To view our complete collection of her work click here: Margaret Gerding – Artist Page

As always, we welcome you to visit the gallery to see work in person.  Our hours for February are 10 am to 5 pm, Thursday – Monday. Come and see us!

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Janis Sanders – New Work, Same Voice

Posted on by Maine Art

Summer Sail I by Janis Sanders Summer Sail II by Janis Sanders

“Man’s integration with and interdependence with nature was clear to me at an early age with the immersion in the agricultural environment a stone’s throw from home. This gave me an early foundation and appreciation for the bounties that surround us in the natural environment.”

Janis Sanders has always found his inspiration from the outside world and how it interacts with man and the objects we build. His stunning use of sky and light combined with structures and vessels has become his signature.

He explains it best when he said, “My self-assigned task for each work, is to convey the ethereal ‘thing’ of light in the paint, as the sun casts its breath on the world, a definite sky and subsequent horizon line define space. Each painting for me begins with the sky, it is like a curtain that is the backdrop for a vast stage.”

Side Street by Janis Sanders

For Sanders, each series of paintings develop a personality of their own, which really cannot be directed, he sees it happen in front of his eyes as he paints through the body of work. “There are a path and direction that develop—it can be a new gesture or color or both, in combination or separately, or a new way of describing familiar territory.”

With this said, Sanders’ new body of work represents what we know and love about his style as we know it, while taking it in a different, unexpectedly delightful direction.

“When I was at Mass College of Art, I was already developing my own voice. I definitely wanted to and put a conscious emphasis on developing my own way of expression,” says Sanders. “ I never want to re-iterate a style that someone else had developed and expressed exquisitely.”

Light From a Cottage by Janis Sanders

Sanders has kept this voice but has added to it, still keeping it very much his own. “One of the Impressionists is said to have said that in order to become a good painter, paint miles and miles of canvas,” shares Sanders. “I believe every painter and artist of any nature ultimately is self-taught. The best educations give the artist the tools, the fundamentals, and vocabulary to best express their intention. But the path, the personal volitional development, and evolution of their own voice comes from within, all driven by the mystery of an invisible force far beyond.”

Winter River by Janis Sanders

We welcome you to stop by and visit Janis Sanders’s entire collection. Our February hours are Thursday – Monday 10 am to 5 pm. As always you can see his works by clicking here, Janis Sanders – Artist Page or read more from Janis himself by clicking here Janis Sanders – Artists Insights and Stories.

Adventurer Bethany Harper Williams – The Other Life of an Artist

Posted on by Maine Art

Upon getting to know our artists, we are so often intrigued and amazed by what they do when they aren’t painting. Like all of us, there has to be more than work in their world. For Bethany Harper Williams, not only is her other life amazing, its extreme. Here is a little peek at the “Other Life” of Bethany Harper Williams.

“I love the outdoors, the mountains and the water, and with that a need to be active. Adventure Holidays are one way we, as a family, meet this need,” says Williams. “We have three boys we had to keep active, and we have instilled the same love of adventure in them.”

Whistler – top of Spanky’s Ladder – Williams family – Dec. 2009

Some of the favorite family holidays are ski holidays. Traveling to places like Whistler, Colorado, and Utah, they spend their days being outside together and their evenings just relaxing and enjoying family time. “For my 40th birthday, my twin sister and I, with our husbands, went heli-skiing,” she shares. Again, not just amazing, but extreme.

Heli-Skiing in British Columbia with my twin sister – 2003

Climbing was yet another adventure sport the Williams family turned into an Adventure Holiday.

“In December 2013 we climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro with two other families. This was the first climb our family had ever done together. We were six adults and seven kids, ages ranging from 14 to 72,” Bethany shares as she sets the stage. “We followed the Limosho route which over the course of eight days took us through five climate zones.”

 Kilimanjaro Summit – The Williams Family  (Ryan, Dave, Bethany, Jay, Andrew) – Dec. 2013

Three days into the hike they celebrated her son’s 20th birthday and had one of the most memorable Christmases at 13,800 ft. “We each brought a light gift for a gift exchange and spent the late afternoon playing games and passing a football over and around the tents,” remembers Williams.

They reached the summit, 19,341 ft, with blue skies, in the early afternoon of Dec. 27. Then turned around to hike down to crater camp where they spent not the most comfortable night at 18,865ft.

“We culminated our trip with a safari in Tanzania. We were treated with many sightings of exotic animals. but spent a great deal of our time reliving and retelling stories from our incredible mountain experience,” she says. “However, the real highlight, looking back, was the camaraderie and discussions and the strong bond created by our adventure together. It’s a shared memory that won’t be forgotten.”

Now that Bethany and her husband Dave are empty nesters or what they call ‘Freebirds’, this past September they embarked on another challenging adventure…the Laugavegur Trail in Iceland. This is an 80-kilometer trail that starts in the interior and makes its way over volcanic rock, steaming fissures, gigantic canyons, expansive glaciers, and majestic waterfalls, ending at the ocean.

Iceland – Laugavegur Trail – Bethany & Dave – Sept. 2017

“It was a fundraising trip for Outward Bound Canada to help fund less fortunate people in distress to experience the therapeutic benefits of outdoor adventure,” says Williams. “As we carried our packs each day, we had time for personal reflection, as well as time to communicate with our fellow travelers. In the evenings we asked ourselves tough questions and had many thoughtful discussions amongst our new friends.”

As with climbing Kilimanjaro, trekking Iceland was more than just about the climb and the accomplishment.  With both trips, there was a thoughtfulness and a self-awareness that during the hectic nature of day-to-day living we don’t allow ourselves the time for. “I came away from this trip refreshed and re-energized and thankful for all that I have,” she says. “It was actually when I came back to civilization in Reykjavik that I received my first email from Maine Art. The positive vibes were all around me!”

This Icelandic adventure confirmed her love and need for the challenge of adventure and the outdoors.

“I need the mountains and the ocean just like I need to paint,” she claims. “It is this power and energy in nature that draws me to continually paint it. I go into my zone when I am painting. The hours pass by, and I am totally absorbed. It is the same connection as when I am surrounded by mountains or looking out to the water. I am at peace.”

Bethany Harper Williams joined Maine Art this past fall and is looking forward to her first full summer season with us.  Not only can you view her work every day at Maine Art Paintings and Sculpture on 14 Western Ave in Kennebunk. She will also be a part the 7th Annual Choice Art Show and a Three Artist Show beginning Labor Day Weekend. As always you can read more about Bethany by clicking Bethany Harper Williams – Stories and Insights and see her entire collection online by clicking Artist Page – Bethany Harper Williams – Artist Page.

 

In January we are open Thursday – Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm. Then starting February first we will be open Thursday – Monday at the same hours.

 

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