Maine Farmland Trust Gallery’s 2019 Small Works Holiday Show features 21 artists from all over the state. The show is a diverse collection of fine arts and crafts with landscapes, figurative work, and abstract imagery related to Maine’s rural culture.
The works in the exhibit range from vibrant panoramas in oils and pastels – by Jude Valentine, Kathleen Perelka, and Robin Rier – to André Benoit, Jr’s series of fanciful wooden assemblages of owls. Leslie Moore, Julie Cyr, Peter Walls, Sara Gagan, and Gail Wartell add variety with their beautiful works of birds and animals, in mediums ranging from acrylics, pen and ink, mixed media collage, and oils.
The lyrical style and vision of Sheep Jones’s oil paintings is juxtaposed with the elegant and colorful interpretive landscape photography of Emily Davis and Jim Nyce. Anne Alexander’s petite ceramic sculptures of pine cones and seed pods dialogue beautifully with the exquisite mixed media nature mandalas of Mango Johnstone.
Handmade, mixed-media stab-binding books by Mj Viano Crowe and an abstract series of stitched, etched, and stained prints by Susan L. Smith weave stories of home and connections to the land.
Sharon Yates, DiTa Ondek, Leslie Anderson, and Leslie Bowman heighten the connection to the natural world with their vibrant still life paintings of flowers, garlic, and onions.
Ethereal figurative prints by Petrea Noyes, using a digital collage technique with pigment inks, bring even more contrast and diversity to the show.
The exhibit will be on display from November 12, 2019 through January 10, 2020, with a gallery reception during the Belfast Holiday Art Walk on Friday, December 6, from 5:30 to 8 p.m.
