The summer 2022 issue of the Maine Arts Journal hopes 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 invite you to reflect on the tension between real and imagined landscapes, between the visible outside world and your inner world and consider how the two might meet and inform each other.
Gabriele Münter, Nightfall in St. Cloud (Abend im Park), oil on paperboard mounted on pulpboard, 3 15/16 x 6 1/2 in. (10 x 16.5 cm), 1906, Brooklyn Museum (photo: Wikimedia Commons).
What is your process when observing the external world and translating these visual stimuli into your work?
How do you approach the idea of a landscape? How do you engage with such a long tradition? How do you attempt to revisit it or even renew it?
How does a landscape echo your emotional state, and how, in turn, can a landscape generate a certain state of mind in the viewer? What other senses, besides sight, might be solicited in a landscape?
Does mapping—that is, determining and expressing spatial relationships between landmarks—play a role in your work?
We welcome contributions in any medium, not just two-dimensional.
Ferdinand Hodler, The Lake of Thun with Symetrical Reflections (Le Lac de Thoune aux reflets symétriques), oil on canvas, 67.30 x 92 cm, 1909, Musée d’art et d’histoire, Geneva (photo: Wikimedia Commons).
Deadline: 1 June 2022.
We invite MAJ member artists (to become a member: click here) to submit up to 4 JPEG or png images (NO TIFF files), approximately 2800 pixels on width, resolution 72dpi.
-
- Include an image list and statement or brief essay (600 words or less) in Word doc. format, NOT a PDF.
- 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).
- Label your document file names: Last Name_Title
- Image list/caption format: create a list that is numbered to match the number in your image file label that includes the following: 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).
- Please wait until all of your material is compiled to submit.
Put “Beyond Plein Air” in the subject line and submit by email to umvalistings@gmail.com by the 1 June 2022 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 then publish image credits. We will not publish images the submitter does not have the right to publish. However, it is to be assumed that any uncredited or unlabeled images are the author’s/submitter’s own images. By submitting to the MAJ, you are acknowledging respect for these policies.
Wassily Kandinsky, Houses at Murnau, oil on cardboard, 19 1/4 x 25 in., 1909, Art Institute, Chicago (photo: Wikimedia Commons).
Thank you,
MAJ Editorial Board: Natasha Mayers, Nora Tryon, Véronique Plesch, and Betsy Sholl (poetry editor)
Image at top: Nicolas de Staël, Sicily (Sicile), oil on canvas, 114 x 146 cm., 1954, Musée de Grenoble (photo: Wikimedia Commons).