Courthouse Gallery will present new work by four artists: Janice Anthony, Jeffery Becton, Richard Keen, and Linda Packard. The exhibition opens on Wednesday, September 11, and runs through October 15. In addition, the best work from the summer season by the gallery’s stable of artists will also be highlighted. The exhibition is free and open to the public.
Courthouse Gallery is located at 6 Court Street in Ellsworth. For gallery hours and more information on upcoming shows call (207) 667-6611, or visit courthousegallery.com.
Janice Anthony is a realist painter who has a great affection for the otherness of the natural world. Her paintings explore this mysterious relationship between humanity and wilderness—parallel worlds where the natural world is clearly a world apart and self sufficient. Anthony holds a BFA from Boston University, and she was awarded a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Her paintings have been included in art books, publications, and in numerous solos shows in Maine and New York, and in national and international exhibitions, including “Masterworks from the International Guild of Realism.” Anthony lives in Jackson, Maine.
Jeffery Becton is pioneer in the field of photo-based art, who creates provocative digital montages inspired by the tidal reaches and atmospheric weather near his Deer Isle home. Author Deborah Weisgall beautifully describes his montages in the monograph Jeffery Becton: Border World (Marshall Wilkes 2014): “Jeffery Becton’s works are meditations on ambivalence: digital montages, beautiful and unsettling mashups, altered realities. . . . Becton is really exploring our own permeability.” Becton’s work has been in numerous solo, group, and juried exhibitions, and has been highlighted in national and international publications. In 2016, the Bates College Museum of Art hosted a solo exhibition of Becton’s large-scale monographs, which then traveled to the Daura Gallery at the University of Tennessee, the Vero Beach Museum of Art in Florida, and to Lynchburg College in Virginia. His work is included in the museum collections of Bates College of Art, Farnsworth Museum of Art, and Portland Museum of Art, among others.
Richard Keen is from Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. He holds a BFA from Millikin University, Dacatur, IL, and a MA from State University of New York (SUNY), Albany, NY. Since moving to Maine in 1999, Keen has maintained a studio at Fort Andross Mill in Brunswick. Keen’s work is inspired by his travels along the coast of Maine, working waterfronts, and his experience diving on boat moorings in Casco Bay. Keen’s work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including Dili in East Timor as part of the Art in Embassies Program. The University of Maine Museum of Art, Bangor, Maine, held a solo show of Keen’s work in 2019. Keen has received grants from the Maine Arts Commission, the University of Rhode Island, and the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. He has been a visiting artist at various educational institutions. Keen’s work has been reviewed in numerous publications, including Art New England, Portland Press Herald, Maine Home + Design, Dispatch Magazine, Fresh Paint Magazine, and Studio Visit Magazine.
Linda Packard is an en plein air landscape painter, who recently transitioned to a totally process driven studio practice. Her new abstract paintings bring the sensuous physicality of her visceral landscapes to a new level. Packard holds a BA in Studio Art from Smith College. She has worked as a graphic designer, librarian and a printmaker, and in 2006, she returned to pursuing a fine art career. Packard spent five years working with the late Boston painter, Jon Imber, in Stonington, Maine, who she still cites as one of her greatest influences. Packard was awarded a Heliker-LaHotan Foundation residency fellowship in 2015, and participated in a month-long residency this past fall at Weir Farm in Wilton, Connecticut in 2017. Packard lives in Bangor Maine, where she maintains a year-round studio.
