Beyond Plein Air:
The Landscape—Real/Recreated/Reassembled/Imagined
Summer 2022
In this issue the editors asked artists and writers to explore the process with which a real landscape is transformed—observable external reality being only a starting point but not the end product. We invited contributors to reflect on the tension between real and imagined landscapes, between the visible outside world and the inner world and to consider how the two might meet and inform each other.
From the Editors: Natasha Mayers, Nora Tryon, Véronique Plesch, Betsy Sholl (poetry editor), with the help of Colby interns Audrey Loo, Mads McDonough, and Caroline Scarola.
The MAJ is supported by the UMVA and by the generous contributions from the Rabkin Foundation and other donors. You can support us by becoming a UMVA member here.
Maine Arts Journal Summer 2022 cover (Neil Welliver, Skeletons Party, c. 1950s–early 1960s). Neil Welliver: Chrysalis (1954–1964) at Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland, Maine, All photos courtesy of the Dowling Walsh Gallery, All Welliver images copyright the Estate of Neil Welliver.
Véronique Plesch – Introduction Summer 2022 – Beyond Plein Air
The Landscape—Real/Recreated/Reassembled/Imagined We understand the draw of the outdoors in Maine, which is perhaps even more enticing after a long winter. This summer issue of the Maine Arts Journal features artists reflecting upon the meanings working en plein air...
Sarah Faragher – Painting the Paintings
I paint from life, alla prima, wet on wet, from start to finish if at all possible. I prefer to complete a painting outside on-site, but sometimes I like to bring it indoors halfway through and work on it away from the scene. Once in a great while, I make a painting...
Tonee Harbert – Through the Static and Distance
This body of work considers human intervention in the landscape. Any purpose imposed on the land leaves a mark that can show a past narrative. These signs/signals inhabit our everyday world, where collectively, they can take on the surreal quality of a dream. This...
elin o’Hara, Madeleine, Sarah, and Susanne Slavick – It’s Necessary to Talk About Trees
Through the touring exhibition Family Tree, four artists from Maine–sisters elin o’Hara, Madeleine, Sarah, and Susanne Slavick—explore trees in historical and current socio-political landscapes. In a 1940 poem,1 Bertolt Brecht asked: What kind of times are...
Anna Dibble
On the process of painting fictional landscape. Landscape. Merriam-Webster: a portion of territory that can be viewed at one time from one place. Oxford English: The distinctive features of a particular situation or intellectual activity. Wikipedia: Sky is almost...
Carl Little – Melanie Essex: Varieties of Landscape Experience
When Melanie Essex studied at the New York Studio School in the early 1990s (twice receiving a Milton Avery Scholarship), first-year students were encouraged to spend their eight-hour day painting from the model in the morning and drawing from the model all afternoon....
Richard Keen
As far back as I can remember, I have made sense of the world through art. Growing up in the rural Midwest, my sense of place was formed by the land around me: crops forming big blocks of color set at sharp angles to each other across the wide, seemingly endless, flat...
Kris Lanzer
I sit in the center of disparate systems with the intention of creating a sense of harmony in the overlap of my inner and outside worlds. While the tension of my real landscape takes its toll on me, I am committed to accessing creativity and resilience. Sure, I hear...
Claire Millikin – Elegies of Now: Cole Caswell’s Rise Photographs
Photographer Cole Caswell’s wet-plate collodion series Rise creates temporal dislocations, fusing the 19th-century past (evoked by wet-plate collodion) with meditative awareness of 21st-century rising sea levels. Eustacy, the swelling ocean, haunts Caswell’s mournful...
Chris Crosman – Neil Welliver: Chrysalis (1954–1964)
Neil Welliver (1929–2005) would likely forgive viewers of a recent exhibition (Neil Welliver: Chrysalis, 1954–1964) at Dowling Walsh Gallery in Rockland, Maine, if they do not recognize these paintings—consisting of family members, academic colleagues and...
Stuart Kestenbaum – Entering the Space
I love cutting the grass. It’s part exercise—I use a push electric mower—and part meditation. I mow diagonally, horizontally, and sometimes in big spirals. I say meditation because for the two hours it takes me to do the job, I can focus on the work at hand; no...
Carl Little – The Maine Landscape: Painting Place
Author’s note: An earlier, longer version of this essay was destined for Edgar Allen Beem’s book Maine Art New as an overview of landscape painting in Maine but was derailed when the University of Maine Press canceled the project in 2018 after sitting on it for many...
Véronique Plesch – Plein Air and Beyond
I spent part of my childhood, teenage years, and young adult life by the shores of Lake Geneva, and this perhaps explains why I am very fond of Konrad Witz’s Miraculous Draft of Fishes, a 15th-century panel painting in which a biblical scene takes place right by the...
Linda Aldrich – Tir na nOg
In this poem about a painting by Jack Yeats, the brother of William Butler Yeats, landscape is both inside and out. I love the way Linda Aldrich takes us out of our own individual hubbub, and deeper into a world that is both seen and imagined, is both inner and outer....
Susan Cook – The Ukrainian Crash Sequence
I love the way this poem is both timely and outside of time. The butterflies are both real and printed on cloth, in danger of extinction and preserved, even as the dress is both made and unmade. I love the way the poet imagines the garment workers as well, who make...
Olivia Hochstadt – Becoming an Artist in Prison
Drawing has been a key part of Chris’s daily artistic practice, a skill he developed over the past 20 years while in prison. The artist is 41 years old now. But last July, Chris made his first ever painting. Now, almost a year later, he is honing his skills. A horse,...
Edgar Allen Beem – Jenna Pirello’s Landscapes of Contradictions
When I first saw them, Jenna Pirello’s paintings struck me as a beautiful bunch of contradictions—deliberate accidents, abstract representations, landscapes with a figurative palette of flesh tones and cosmetic colors. Is it a landscape? A still-life? A portrait? An...
Carl Little – “My Terrible History”: Edgar Allen Beem’s The Russian Lesson
Mr. Rossolowsky, who considered himself the last Russian artist on earth, fit in nicely [on Congress Street in Portland], being poor, elderly, and a painter of landscapes and street scenes. That’s how Edgar Allen Beem helps set the stage in chapter 1, “Tranquility Man...
June Kellogg, Alan Fishman, Louise Bourne – Members’ Showcase
June Kellogg I often enjoy walking meditations in the areas around my home. These walks have helped me learn to embrace the world just as it is and appreciate the ever-changing landscape and quality of life around me. While walking, certain arresting views and...
Valera Crofoot, Katherine Cartwright, Maggie Fehr – Members’ Showcase
Valera Crofoot Re-visualizing the landscape lends itself to depicting landscapes of displacement. As landscapes are altered by war, displaced inhabitants form lines of exodus as they assume the status of refugees. As the landscape is altered, and thus re-visualized,...
Dave Wade, Jean Noon, Mark Barnette, Ruth Sylmor – Members’ Showcase
Dave Wade Beyond Plein Air, The Land-Escape A landscape can be either entered into or appreciated from a distance. Sometimes you become part of the landscape, but often you don’t know it. You might see your shadow, but you might not. It’s still there, though . . . A...
Kelly Desrosiers, Leslie Woods, Abbott Meader – Members’ Showcase
Kelly Desrosiers “Landscape” is a concept, a genre, and a tradition in art, but long before I knew what those words even meant, landscape was simply the world I lived in. There was nothing else! I grew up and have always lived in rural or remote places, interacting...
Ann Tracy, Greg Burns, Nancy Benner – Members’ Showcase
Ann Tracy I’ve been creating “Emotional Landscapes” since my first foray into digital art in the late 90s. Many of them are based on photographic work (like Imaginary Landscape), while others are created with both photography as well as digital painting (like...
ARRT! Update Summer 2022
ARRT! The Artists’ Rapid Response Team (ARRT!) is a project of the Union of Maine Visual Artists. The ARRTists are members of the UMVA who collaborate with progressive organizations throughout Maine to create “visual soundbites,” frequently in the form of banners, to...
LumenARRT! Update Summer 2022
LumenARRT! is a project of the Artists' Rapid Response Team (ARRT!). We work through the Union of Maine Visual Artists (UMVA), a members’ organization that advocates for artists and furthers the work of progressive non-profits in the state of Maine. Our video...
UMVA Portland Chapter Update
The Portland area chapter has been active. We welcomed new members and volunteers old and new, had several gallery exhibitions, an online fundraising campaign, sent out a survey, and held well-attended online monthly meetings. Our volunteers make us thrive. John...
Pat and Tony Owen – UMVA Archives (Or, Out the Back Door and into the Sun)
Pat and I attended a memorial walk recently. It honored a local publican who died a couple of years ago. We knew him well, as we had played music in his pub every Sunday for several years. We gathered in the parking area near the pub, about a hundred of us; the lead...
Theme and Invitation to Submit Fall 2022: Community
Art can be a solitary pursuit and yet friends, family, and community in general offer indispensable emotional support systems that allow us to grow. The myth of the lone artist doesn’t do justice to the role that community has always played in artistic creation....