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Rosie Moore, “Three Row Boats.”

Courthouse Gallery Fine Art offers a rare glimpse into formative creative stages with “What Came Before,” an exhibition highlighting early artworks by diverse contemporary artists, many working for five or more decades, on view Dec. 3 to Jan. 10.

These overlooked artworks have remained out of view, overshadowed by later periods of maturity and recognition. Placed together, the collective emerges with fresh vitality, asking collectors and viewers to reconsider forgotten works returning into view.

An Artist Reception takes place from 5 to 7 p.m. Dec. 3. The exhibition and reception are free and open to the public. A catalog with Artist Statements is available by emailing info@courthousegallery.com.

“What Came Before” creates dialogue about beginnings and experimentation that shaped each artist’s practice: tentative gestures, tested boundaries, risks, discoveries, bold departures, and early sparks anticipating future directions.

Highlights include Tom Curry’s first oil painting (1995) of Chatto Island, a small nearshore island in Brooklin, Maine. Curry was renting a house overlooking Chatto when he began painting the island to explore his fear of water.

“Over the years, the island has become more than a motif for me,” Curry explains. “This mountaintop in the sea suggests a refuge, safe and stable while the elements of sky, cloud and water whirl around it in the chaos of motion and change. With the island as a centering place, my paintings explore the constant and gorgeous changes all around us — how light moves across the landscape, the earth’s shadow on the atmosphere, contrails arcing across the sky, mist, fog, sea smoke — these elemental and fleeting phenomena.”

Other highlights include early works by Ragna Bruno, Jeffery Becton, Heidi Daub, Philip Frey, Richard Keen, Rosie Moore, William Irvine, and Jon Imber (1950–2014). One standout is Woman With Lamb, a life-sized white pine log sculpture by Lisa Bécu from Tenant’s Harbor.

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Alison Rector, “Warm Bath.”
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Jon Imber (1950–2014), “Silverhill.”
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Kate Hanlon, “Garden Wedding.”
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Jeffery Becton, “Easter Sunday.”

“I loved the stained-glass windows, the big organ, the frankincense. I particularly liked stations of the cross carved by Medard Bourgeault, founder of the Ecole de Sculpture Surbois, where I went at the age of seventeen,” Bécu reflects. “Although I work primarily in stone, I was a wood carver for many years. Only later in my life did I realize how much the religious art of my childhood influenced me, which is very apparent in Woman with Lamb, one of three pieces left from a series of life-sized women wood sculptures I made in the mid-1990s.”

Participating artists include Susan Amons, Janice Anthony, Jeffery Becton, Lise Bécu, Ragna Bruno, Tom Curry, Heidi Daub, Rick Fox, Philip Frey, Kate Hanlon, Jon Imber, William Irvine, Richard Keen, Philip Koch, Joseph Keiffer, Rosie Moore, John Neville, Alison Rector and Katherine Wilkes.

Courthouse Gallery is at 6 Court St., Ellsworth, with gallery hours Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, call 207-667-6611 or visit www.courthousegallery.com.