(Image: "Rock, Georgetown, Maine" by Paul Strand)

(Portland, ME) Through September 11, 2011, the Portland Museum of Art will exhibit 65 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and photographs which examine the personal and professional relationships of a small group of American modernists who worked in Maine in the first half of the 20th century. Although much of their artistic activity was centered in New York, along with their mentor the photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz, these artists all chose to summer in the small mid-coast communities south of Bath, in a region that was then known as “Seguinland.”

It was there that they developed a camaraderie and sense of place that strongly influenced their work. This exhibition will feature works by F. Holland Day, Clarence White, Mardsen Hartley, Max Weber, Marguerite and William Zorach, and Gaston Lachaise, among others.

For more information or to view other images, please visit the Portland Museum of Art website.

(Image: "Windbreak" by Mimo Gordon Riley)

Recent paintings by Mimo Gordon Riley.

(Rockland, ME) The Jonathan Frost Gallery presents its first solo show of the season with Mimo Gordon Riley’s exhibition of recent paintings, entitled Entering. The show runs through Saturday, July 30th.

Mimo Gordon Riley, a New England native and member of an extensive and noted family in the arts, spends long summers in Tenants Harbor. “I have been coming to Maine my whole life,” says the artist. “Maine is very much in my core.” Following early art training at Boston’s Museum School, Mimo enrolled in the Portland (Maine) School of Art at the age of 38, and spent four years there, earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. She now lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, when not in Maine, and exhibits throughout the Northeast.

Mimo’s new work continues her fascination with trees. “Trees are much more grounded than we are. They throw their roots well down into the uncharted territory of the unconscious, while their trunks and branches rise jubilantly to the heavens…I have been painting trees for about four years now, some from observation, some from memory, and some from – what can I say – my soul. I have experimented with various ways to make them mine; colors, shapes, intensity, contrast. I don’t plan. I simply start and they emerge. I push them back and they come out in another place, and then after that happens a few times, we meet in a kind of truce between what I think I want to paint and what they seem to want to be.” Mimo says that the show’s title, Entering, is a metaphor for the experience of exploring a visual theme in such depth: “…walking into a forest and finding your way.”

(Image: "Free Wheeling" by Mimo Gordon Riley)

The show presents thirteen works in oil, ranging from a group of twenty-four-inch square paintings to the centerpiece, a six-foot-square assemblage of thirty-six images, entitled Family Trees 36. The trees explode with uncommon color and vary in mood from the quiet contemplative of birch groves to the closed-for-the-season of snow-laden branches to the delirious dance of spring greens. All capture and express our human desire for permanence and stability, balanced by our wish for growth, change, and unvanquished hope.

Throughout the season, the gallery exhibits work by an outstanding roster of artists in all media, including Joseph Adolphe, Siri Beckman, Barbara Beebe, Susan Beebe, Phoebe Bly, Carolyn Caldwell, Jonathan Frost, Kathryn Frund, Liz Gribin, Gints Grinbergs, Peter Haines, Alison Hildreth, Constance Kiermaier, Richie Lasansky, Mary Lennox, Steve Lindsay, Holly Meade, Gary Milek, Jessie Pollock, Steve Porter, Phil Schirmer, and Gretchen Dow Simpson.

Shows scheduled for later in the season are: Phoebe Bly, New Work, August 5 through August 27; and Siri Beckman, Parks, Prints, and Paintings, September 2 through September 24.

Nan Mulford is the Gallery Director of Jonathan Frost Gallery. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. For more information, please call 207-596-0800, e-mail the gallery at frostgal@midcoast.com or visit www.jonathanfrostgallery.com.

(Image: "Canyon, Broadway and Exchange Place" by Berenice Abbott)

(Waterville, ME) In the 1930s, photographers pushed the genre of documentary photography to the forefront of public culture in the United States and onto the walls of newly opened museums and art galleries. That historic development receives new insight with American Modern, an exhibition focusing exclusively on the work of American photographers Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, and Margaret Bourke-White. The show runs through October 2, 2011.

Organized by the Amon Carter Museum and the Colby Museum, the exhibition comes to Waterville after its display at the Art Institute of Chicago.

For more information, please visit the Colby College Museum of Art website.

(Image: "Evergreen" by Vito DeVito)

(Norway, ME) Frost Farm Gallery is proud to present "Cast From Life" by artist Vito DeVito through July 30th. DeVito is a graduate of Seton Hall University and has studied extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe. Today, he is a successful artist and sculptor, as well as a dedicated conservationist. Seasonally, the DeVito family has traveled to their Norway, Maine home where Mr. DeVito has painted during the summer months for the past twenty-five years.

DeVito has collaborated with Master Printmaker and innovator of the Solarplate method of etching, Dan Welden since 2008. Rounding out the artist's commissions list are requests for hunting and fishing scenes, nature-oriented and figurative bronze sculpture, and portrait work in all mediums.

For more information, please visit the Frost Farm Gallery website.