“My paintings begin long before any paint is applied to the canvas or panel on the easel. I always begin with a question,” shares artist Janis H. Sanders.
“What do I love about Maine?”
“Is it the sun’s first glow casting myriads of colors gently, quietly across a pre-dawn yet unlit sky? Yes!”
“Is it a silver morning glimmering on the ocean with near-blinding intensity reflection across a bay? Yes!”
“Is it the deep mellifluous bass rolling roar of lobster boat motors, lobstermen checking their pots on a rocky coast in the earliest daylight while the world has yet to awake? Yes!”
“Is it the calm lapping of midnight quiet waves kissing the shore in a lulling meditation? Yes!”
“Is it the insistent repeating cyclical sound of rolling stones at Owl’s Head with each hefty wave’s entry and exit from shore? Yes!”
“Is it the glorious shores of Rosa Rugosa in the bright refrain or rainbow-colored Lupine casting their cheer to the world? Yes!”
“Is it the choral braying of dozens of near-sunset evening cows in a meadow in late May, breaking the otherwise quiet, cool evening stillness and capturing all your attention in the sweet spring air? Yes, yes, and yes!”
So many experiences and dozens of other landscapes along the Maine coast from the amalgam of rich, visceral visual and emotional inputs provide the fodder for Sanders’s paintings.
“I am inspired by the deepest, darkest of night and the most profound quiet on Earth while standing on the sidewalk on Rt. 1 at midnight in Searsport, smiling and delighting as the occasional lone 18-wheeler, breaking that indescribable silence, rolls as unobtrusively as it can at twenty-five miles per hour through town,” laughs Sanders. “Or maybe it’s an artist at this hour across the street in her second-floor white studio, yellow-cast incandescent lights in an overhead ceiling fixture, in her linen white Victorian vaulted ceiling home, vigorously painting a large canvas, immersed from the rest of the world.”
The show opens on Saturday, August 19, at 10 AM, at Maine Art Hill at 5 Chase Hill Road in Kennebunk. These two shows run for almost a month, ending September 6. If in town, please consider the Artists’ Reception on Saturday, August 19, from 5-7 PM at 5 Chase Hill Road, Kennebunk. All are welcome.
Click to see the VIRTUAL TOUR.
ARTIST INSIGHTS – Janis H. Sanders.
ALL AVAILABLE WORKS – Janis H. Sanders