Local Color Gallery presents paintings by the late Howard Rackliffe

Local Color Gallery in Belfast will present paintings by the late Howard Rackliffe (1917-1987) as the guest artist for May and June. Rackliffe was a painter and poet who was born in Connecticut and developed a deep love of Maine, which became the subject of many of his bold, semi-abstract landscape paintings.

Rackliffe adopted a painterly style that was unique and idiosyncratic yet in dialogue with the modern aesthetics of his day, as characterized by the works of Marsden Hartley, Albert Pinkham Ryder, and Arthur Dove, whom he admired. Despite living a relatively rootless life, his time in Connecticut, New York and Maine, as well as the people he encountered there, deeply impacted and inspired his work. Rackliffe had many close friendships with a younger generation of Maine artists and his legacy remains strong to this day.

Rackliffe’s work was exhibited widely, including solo exhibitions at The Farnsworth Art Museum and Caldbeck Gallery in Rockland. In 2017, on the centenary of his birth, the New Britain Museum of American Art presented a retrospective comprising 60 paintings, spanning the 1950s to the 1980s. The paintings were installed in concert with several of his poems.

Local Color Gallery, 135 High St., Belfast, is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. Visit localcolorgallerymaine.com for details.