Arts & Leisure
OMAA offers a great opportunity to see rarely exhibited works by James Wyeth and more
By Rose Safran
OGUNQUIT - The credit goes to Curator Mike Culver, who has assembled an impressive collection of fine art for the inaugural 2007 exhibitions at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art (OMAA).
First, there is a large gallery filled with a variety of paintings by contemporary Maine - and Pennsylvania - artist James "Jamie" Wyeth, born 1946. These are on loan not only from museum, private and corporate collections including the Bank of America, Farnsworth Museum and others, but also from the artist's own private holdings and those of his talented father, Andrew Wyeth.
Technically superb in both oil and watercolor, reflecting an almost photo-realism quality, depicting people, places, houses, landscape, birds, animals and floral motifs, these James Wyeth paintings, immediately arrest, each one an eye-catcher. Because obvious technical excellence sometimes obscures subtleties, Culver likes to point to thematic underpinnings that might otherwise be missed in admiring the skill involved in creating this fine art.
For example, he points to "Wolfish" - saying that it is a real fish. The threatening fish is seen, low on the side of the painting, while two seagulls set against a beautiful blue sky dominate, inviting entry to the work, one appearing wary, the other one, farther away, seemingly oblivious to the impending danger.
Culver then moves to the massive, impressive oil, "Harbor, Monhegan" shipped here from Wilmington, Del., which he describes as "a party for the seagulls." Filled with detail, it is a scene of trash-burning at the waterfront on Monhegan Island and includes a boy who is doing the work, a brilliant fire - you can almost feel its heat - and gulls galore seeming to fly off the canvas.
Next, we are led to a wonderful oil portrait of the artist's noted father, "Andrew," a sharply defined face highlighted against a black background, a traditional classic-style work with its special light emanating from the face itself.
The same boy depicted at the waterfront in "Harbor, Monhegan," a teenager James Wyeth painted over and over again and in various developmental stages of his life, this time is painted holding a seagull. He is wearing a "Hard Rock" shirt; his contemplative mood reflects the ambivalence that all youngsters feel as they grow older, and anticipate a life change. Culver enlightens: the boy, figuratively superb here, is about to leave all that he has known and enter the world beyond his island.
Then, there is "Summer House - Winter House" a watercolor with two neighboring houses arranged, "like people." Not to be missed is the thick, juicy handling of the generously applied oil in "Ram" or the light-filled "Wicker" in which the curved furniture, Culver notes, takes on the form of a "rolling sea" and summer is written in white. "Wyeth painted lots of wicker," we are told.
Noteworthy is a painting of laundry, mostly blankets, hanging to dry, flying in the wind, with wonderful patterns indicated. It's realism, yes, detailed, bright, alive, delightful - and so much of it inspired by the Maine island turf where James Wyeth spends his summers. What a special treat!
Prints by Jacob Lawrence
In another gallery are prints by the noted black artist, Jacob Lawrence, on loan from the D. C. Moore Gallery in New York City. Lawrence was first recognized for and received great acclaim for his "migration" series of paintings, which entered museum collections and established his reputation. These astonishing historically important works of art, all painted in tempora on paper, mostly small in size, but literally loaded with brightly colored narrative detail, were created during and after World War II when huge migrations of blacks left the rural south to go to cities such as Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.
From 1963 on, Lawrence turned to printmaking, producing etchings, drypoints, silkscreens and woodcuts. In these prints, he retained the colors he had been successful with in his original works on paper. Bright reds, yellows, blues dominate these narrative works which have a primitive look, albeit a sophisticated one at times. A total of 36 of these vividly colored prints, many of them poster-size, all containing bright primary colors, involve themes taken from the Bible's Genesis, the life of Frederick Douglass, a builders' series and the great "migration." In Lawrence's art, there is a lively, upbeat, hopeful quality - something quite jazzy - the result of his striking use of color and careful juxtapositions of highly active people.
Connie Hayes in France
This Maine artist is no stranger to this area. The works on view here, and exhibited for the first time, are different from many that we've enjoyed seeing at the Old York Historical Society's George Marshall Store Gallery exhibitions. Normally we see Hayes's images in oil - they are color-saturated finished paintings of Maine places. In France, however, the artist simplified her life by using pastels to make on-site sketches for paintings she planned to create upon returning to America.
Collectors of this popular artist's art will now have a look at her handling of this medium, for Culver decided to show some of the pastels created on site as well as oils created after her return. There are light-filled interior scenes of table settings, exterior landscapes and houses. This fine colorist tended to use hot colors - flaming corals, oranges, reds, golds - when depicting sun-drenched views, especially of table settings and offerings. She also used cooler colors with which we are very familiar - blues, purples, blue-greens -equally rich and bright, and all with broad spontaneous-appearing loose brushstrokes in picturesque finely composed landscapes and village scenes.
The Jamie Wyeth, Jacob Lawrence and Connie Hayes exhibits will remain on view at the OMAA on Shore Road in Ogunquit through Aug. 21.
