It’s spring and there’s more daylight. Light is our summer theme.
Indispensable to life, light is the sine qua non of vision and, by extension, of art itself. It is a physical reality that artists have chased for centuries. To represent light—to capture the immaterial—remains a fundamental challenge that inherently requires its opposite: darkness.
Guido Reni, Aurora, ceiling fresco, 1613–14, Casino dell’Aurora, Rome (photo: Wikimedia Commons).
Artists have always made art that might serve as a candle to light the way in dark times. We are interested in moving beyond a passive “light in the dark” toward an active quest for illumination and revelation. We are thinking of light as an active force against obfuscation and even obscurantism—the “casting of light” on what is hidden and forbidden. This enduring symbolism is etched into our collective history, found in mottos ranging from Geneva’s Post Tenebras Lux (After darkness, light) to Colby College’s Ex Scientia, Lux (From knowledge, light). Also compelling are the links between light and acts of discovery and creation—how the process of “unearthing” is to bring it to light, or how the French describe the act of birth as donner le jour (to give the day).
Georges de La Tour, The Penitent Magdalen, oil on canvas, 52.5 x 40.25 in. (133.4 x 102.2 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City (photo: Wikimedia Commons).
James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, oil on panel, 18.2 x 23.7 in. (46.4 x 60.3 cm), Detroit Institute of Art (photo: Wikimedia Commons).
We invite you to reflect on what these concepts hold for you and your work today. Beyond the technical strategies of depicting highlights, what symbolism do you attach to light? Are you exploring the “light at the end of the tunnel,” the “blindness” of glare, or the transformative power of revelation? Tell us how you experience light, the meanings it holds for you, and how you translate it into the material world of your art.
Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, Il sole (The Sun), oil on canvas, 150.5 x 150.5 cm, 1904, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome (photo: Véronique Plesch).
For the Summer 2026 issue, the Maine Arts Journal is delighted to partner once again with the L.C. Bates Museum’s summer exhibition, Light. While the L.C. Bates exhibition will explore light through the lens of natural history—for instance, seasonal cycles, the opposition between natural and artificial light, and nighttime phenomena—we invite our MAJ contributors to go beyond this horizon, online in the upcoming journal.
Deadline: 1 June 2026.
Guidelines for UMVA Members’ Showcase:
We invite MAJ member artists to participate in the Showcase (to become a member, click here).
- For the Light issue, submit up to four JPEG or png images (NO TIFF files), approximately 2500 pixels on longest side, resolution 72dpi.
- Label each image file as follows: your last name_Number of Image_Title (with no spaces in the title). Please DO NOT put whole caption/credit in image file label, see image list/caption format below (if you are submitting for a group put your own last name in first).
- Include a numbered image list at the end of your statement or brief essay (600 words or less) in Word doc. format, NOT a PDF.
- Image list/caption format: create a list that is numbered to match the number in your image file label that includes the following in this order: Artist’s Name, Title of Work, medium, size (example: 9 x 12 in.), date (optional), photo credit (example: photo: Ansel Adams) if not included we assume it is courtesy of the artist. Example: Unknown Artist, Untitled, oil on canvas, 9 x 12 in., 2000 (photo: Ansel Adams).
- Label your document file names: Last Name_Title.
- Please wait until all of your material is compiled to submit.
Put “Light” in the subject line and submit by email to umvalistings@gmail.com by the 1 June 2026 deadline. MAJ will limit the Members’ Showcase section to UMVA members who have not been published in the past year.
Do not send preformatted visual essays. Our editors will lay out text and images submitted using the guidelines above.
It is the MAJ’s policy to request and publish image credits. We will not publish images for which the contributor does not have the right to publish. However, it is to be assumed that any uncredited or unlabeled images are contributing artists’ own images. By submitting to the MAJ, you are acknowledging respect for these policies.
Image at top: Tracey Emin, I Followed You into the Water Knowing I Would Never Return, neon, 33.11 x 72.95 x 3.15 in. (84.1 x 185.3 x 8 cm), 2011 (photo: Wikimedia Commons).