MOTHERS Gallery shows the disappearing world of Downeast Maine through work by Robin Rier and Valerie Aponik

MOTHERS Art & Antique Gallery next exhibition, “DISAPPEARING: The Working Waterfront of Downeast,” features the paintings of Robin Rier and Valerie Aponik. The show will open July 3, and there will be a reception and book launch from 4 to 6 p.m. July 6.

The exhibition and book of the same title features their paintings and stories of the working waterfront in Downeast Maine and will remain on view until the end of July.

Aponik and Rier have a long history of working together side by side, painting en plein air. This is the third “Downeast Dialogue” exhibition for these two painters. The first was at University of Maine at Machias in 2016, the second at MOTHERS Gallery in 2023.

The working waterfront of Downeast Maine, as many have known, has been fading for many years and is disappearing, storm by storm: climate change, rising sea levels and economic volatility. Rier and Aponik are both long-term residents of the Bold Coast, with homes overlooking the sea, and have been preserving the disappearing working waterfront in paint that is so iconic to this area.

This exhibition and book are dedicated to all those who preceded us and made the Bold Coast what it was and what it is today, and to those who are working on making what it will become.

“As Maine evolves over the 21st century, the choice of landscape subject is changing,” said gallery owner and curator Whitney Vosburgh. “Even as many artists continue to seek out the hidden cove, the secluded stream, the perfect growth of birch trees, others are busy dealing with the monuments of a modern industrial society, such bridges, wharves, jetties, smokehouses, docks, fishing boats, floats, traps and all the other icons of the working waterfront.”

As the natural resources of the planet dwindle, the landscape of Maine — and the depictions of it — become all the more precious. The great late Maine writer Elizabeth Coatsworth offered a prescriptive course of action for preservation that would match the sentiments of most Maine painters, present and past: “If Americans are really to become at home in America, it must be through the devotion of many people to many small, deeply loved places.”

The two featured artists, Valerie Aponik and Robin Rier, have, in one way or another, devoted themselves to such “small, deeply loved places.“ They have gone beyond typical coastal scenery to capture an essence, a quality of light, land and sea and of the working waterfront, which belongs to Maine. Even as they heighten our appreciation of a particular view, they also preserve it, and such acts of preservation will be essential to Downeast Maine’s future — proof of a beauty and heritage that knows no bounds.

We are not only of the natural world but also of the human-made world. Of course, some subject matter has gone the way of the wind. Clipper ships at anchor in a still harbor used to be a favorite motif for marine painters in this state, but despite climate change and rising sea levels, we are fortunate that there are still painters who are interpreting, celebrating and memorializing today’s Downeast Maine’s working waterfront before it changes beyond recognition.

MOTHERS’ next exhibition, in August, will be a two-man show: “The Hudson River to the Pleasant River,” featuring paintings of Maine and New England by David Vosburgh and Richard Bazelow.

MOTHERS Art Gallery is at 19 Church Hill Circle, Columbia Falls. Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday from May 1 to Sept. 21 but closed during the last week of each month, otherwise open by appointment by calling 510-504-1109. Learn more at www.mothersartgallery.com.