UMVA Members' Spring Exhibition 2019

The Union of Maine Visual Artists is pleased to present the “UMVA Members' Spring Exhibition” at the UMVA Gallery in the Portland Media Center, 516 Congress Street, Portland Maine, June 2-28, 2019. Thirty-four artists from across Maine will be represented in the exhibition. The work is new and engaging and ranges across several media. The Opening and Artists' Reception is Friday, June 7, 5-8 p.m. at the UMVA Gallery, 516 Congress Street. Free and open to the public.

The UMVA Gallery is open during regular operating hours of the Portland Media Center

( http://portlandmedia.org/location-hours/) In addition, for the June show the Gallery is open 1-4 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. On First Friday Art Walk, June 7, the Gallery hours are 1-8 p.m.

Artist Christine Higgins describes her “cathedral sunrise II” as a work of “pulp paper handmade fibers.” Its quiet colors, organic forms and hues and soft texture evoke the silence of a sunrise in the woods. In Anne Strout's fiery encaustic “Constant Turmoil” shades of blue, yellow, orange-red, white and black smolder and melt into each other.

“Sunday Morning Paper” by Rabee Kiwan is an expressionistic oil painting of an elderly man in a dark cold room reading a newspaper by window light. As curator Liz Prescott describes the work, “Rabee's painting is rendered beautifully, an evocative world in earthy browns complemented by luminous strokes of lavender and ruby beneath the window with bright flecks of yellow and white suggesting light filtering through the opaque window.”

Another gem is “Cuba,” Lesley MacVane's photograph of a Cuban couple dressed in brilliant white holding a gauzy white umbrella. In the hazy background a dock loading crane rises against a faded blue sky. Also, Jen Joachin's fine realistic acrylic painting “Monument Square” is filled with light and architectural detail.

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