In terms of a sustained vision of everyday beauty, painter Lois Dodd would be hard to beat. Since the 1950s, Dodd has pursued a simple, direct, pleasurable approach to painting the stuff of ordinary life — the landscapes around her, the environments she inhabits, her gardens and yards, her homes and her friends — all […]
Here are 12 of our picks for the best art galleries in Maine. They’re sure to please any art enthusiast! In 30 years of writing about art in Maine and New England (with an occasional foray into New York), I’ve naturally become attached to some of the art galleries I’ve visited repeatedly. Were I to […]
The wind was blowing hard and cold through Manchester, New Hampshire, the first week of April when I paid a visit to the newly renovated Currier Museum of Art, now re-opened after two years of construction. The stiff wind was enough to set the curls of scrap metal atop the Currier’s new hood ornament, a […]
Over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to spend time with a great many artists, from the famous — Neil Welliver, Andrew Wyeth, Alex Katz, Robert Indiana — to the obscure. On the whole, I prefer the obscure — painters who persist whether or not they ever achieve critical acclaim or commercial success. Why? Because […]
The DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, Massachusetts, is one of my favorite New England art museums and always well worth a visit, if only for a stroll around the art-studded grounds. The current tour de focus photography exhibition, Presumed Innocence: Photographic Perspectives of Children, however, makes the DeCordova a must stop between now […]
The Bates College Museum of Art is currently featuring two exhibitions of art in the form of environmental advocacy. Wildness Within Wildness Without: Exploring Maine’s Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail features large-format, visionary color photographs by Bridget Besaw. Taking Different Trails: The Artists’ Journey to Katahdin Lake presents paintings, drawings and photographs by 20 artists involved in the […]
The Farnsworth Art Museum is the engine that drives Rockland, Maine. For most of its 60 years, the Farnsworth was a sleepy backwater institution featuring a historic house museum, a private library, and an art gallery. This little downtown complex, known by its proper name — the William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum — […]
Photography is the hottest medium in the art world at the moment and has been now for almost a decade. The accessibility of photo technology in a digital age is making it possible for a veritable army of artists to generate imagery for all intents and purposes. A Photo Salon As I’ve been writing monthly […]
My limited experience with news blogs has given me the impression that they’re wild and lawless places where rampant rumors, unvetted and untrustworthy, and partisan opinions, unexamined and unedited, are passed along willy-nilly by pseudonymous correspondents who could be anyone and anywhere. Of course, that may just be the old ink-stained wretch in me. I’m […]
There’s no such thing as bad art. I used to think that the work of the art critic was to judge art and artists, to sort out the good and dispose of the bad. Years ago, however, I came to realize that on the scale of human actions from genocide to sainthood, making art ranks […]
Let a Maine Guide show you how comfy a day on a frozen lake can be.
