paintings by Jessica Ives

The month of May will arrive next week. I’m desiring clean, bright color and warm light in contrast to Maine’s raw and chilly mud season. I’m rushing summer by painting swimmers and sailors in the studio. I’m calling “those things that be not as though they were.”

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Every Tuesday The Maine will post a new painting by Jessica Stammen. These small works, all 4 x 4 inches on cradled birchwood panels, will be concurrently listed for auction on dailypaintworks.com, a fantastic platform designed by artists, for artists. View the auction for this painting here, or simply click on the image above.

Tuesday 207 paintings are exclusive to The Maine. They depict the land, the light and the people that make this state a state of wonder. Visit the growing gallery of Tuesday 207 paintings here.

Jessica is the editor of The Maine and writes occasionally as The Outsider.

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Sometimes a memory contains so much light and color that I need to paint it more than once. Today’s 207 captures such a moment. I first painted the above 8×10 inch panel of leafy-watery-shade surrounding Jonathan, perched and illuminated on a friend’s dock. I felt compelled enough by the memory of this moment to go large and painted the 36×36 inch panel below, assuming such scale would allow me to work out overflowing excitement. I was wrong. A tiny 4×4″ was still in order. The opportunity to hold a memory in the palm of my hand and see it distilled through multiple expressions into such intimate immensity was a gift. Painting studies don’t always start small and lead large.

Rockland photographer Jim Dugan creates a wide variety of pictures but the most surprising is a series of digital kaleidoscopes that he’s been making, all with Maine themes. He says:

“Yes, I know this is a bit of a gimmick. So sue me. There are plenty of gimmicks in photography these days. They’re all wonderful or terrible, depending on who is using them and what images result. There’s lots of fun stuff in this process: choosing the photo, choosing how to slice it, what to do with the background. I’m not sure where this will lead but for now, it’s satisfying.”

He’s in the process of printing them on 30″ metal disks. Some will be on view at Thomas Moser Cabinetmakers in Freeport this summer.

The Wake of the Elizabeth Ann

Lichen and snow, Acadia Loop Road

Jim’s Beach 1

Jim’s Beach 2

Leaves and Shells, Rockport

Cookie Bite

Popham Sand

Fog Eat Strand

Departure

Pot Warp, Monhegan

paintings by Scott Kelley

Gluskap and the…, 2014. Watercolor and gouache on paper, each 18″ x 24″.

Gluskap and the…, (detail) 2014. Watercolor and gouache on paper, 18″ x 24″.

Snowy Owl, 2014. Watercolor and gouache on paper, 40″ x 30″.

photographs via tons of land

photograph via tons of land

a recent status by Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors editor Polly Saltonstall 

Yesterday’s warm sunshine put me in such a good mood I made risotto for dinner with bacon and some of the huge leeks I’ve been growing in the garage all winter, topped with fresh eggs from neighbors. The icing on the cake was opening the window before bed and hearing my first spring peepers. Those trilling high notes pull spring right up out of the ground and into my soul.

painting by Jessica Ives

It’s early spring; a hopeful, warm-ish day. The window is open and I’m thinking about quantum mechanics, about how we exist in a web of possibilities like a wave. It is only when we look, when we see, when we observe one of these many possibilities that an object or moment matters as matter, that it is…

Yes, the window in the studio is open and I am thinking as I paint; a paddling scene from a similar day almost exactly a year ago takes shape on my panel. My brain lights up with memory like the sun lights up this room. A river is like time, and both are waves of possibility. A moment of flow caught in paint is a miracle of seeing.

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Every Tuesday The Maine will post a new painting by Jessica Ives. These small works, all 4 x 4 inches on cradled birchwood panels, will be concurrently listed for auction on dailypaintworks.com, a fantastic platform designed by artists, for artists. View the auction for this painting here, or simply click on the image above.

Tuesday 207 paintings are exclusive to The Maine. They depict the land, the light and the people that make this state a state of wonder. Visit the growing gallery of Tuesday 207 paintings here.

Jessica is the editor of The Maine and writes occasionally as The Outsider.

text and haiku by Kristen Lindquist

Today is my youngest sister’s birthday, and what a beautiful day it is!

All morning I rake,
exposing tulip leaves
to the jubilant sun.