STATEMENT

My work is inspired by the natural world, my garden, my life and the universe. I am a passionate expressionist. My paintings all start by messing up the surface.. strokes, colors, gestures. I paint with my hands, sticks, tubes, knives, brushes, whatever is at my disposal. I use oil, acrylic, enamel, weeds, trash...whatever is outside and around my studio. It's not long before the paintings takes on a life of their own. I don't try to harness the energy. Sometimes the paintings seem to paint themselves and at other times it's a struggle to come to surface. During the act of making paintings images ebb and flow; some real, some imagined. My memories seem to influence the outcome. I feel if a painting is successful it should address the viewer in a timely and personal way.

BIO

Jenny was born in 1952 Brooklyn, New York. She came to Maine in 1994. She earned an MFA Painting from Hunter College of CUNY in 1986, Studied painting with George McNeil, Mercedes Matter, Frederic Thursz, Estaban Viscente and David Reed at The New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. She studied Photography at Brooklyn College of CUNY with WWII and D-Day Invasion photographer Walter Rosenblum (mentored by Paul Strand and Lewis Hine) and earned a BS in Art Photography in 1980. She spent the Summer of 1984 at the Vermont Studio Colony where she met and studied painting with Ron Gorchov. After taking a Continuing Studies course at Maine College of Art along with artist/painter Michel Droge. She is a co-founder and member of SEVEN, a collective of Seven Maine abstract artists who collectively and singularly exhibit in Maine and nationally.

She has exhibited her paintings and photographs in Maine and New York. Recent exhibitions include Soho Renaissance Factory, NY, NY, AIR Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Mikhail Zakin Gallery, Demerest, NJ, Frank Brockman Gallery, Brunswick, ME, Maine Art Gallery, Wiscasset, ME, Harlow Gallery, Hallowell, ME, Yarmouth Historical Society, ME, Zero Station, Portland, ME, The Bakery Photo-a-gogo, Portland ME, Ocean House Gallery, So. Portland, ME and more. She lives with her husband, 3 sons, a dog, cats, chickens, ducks, birds and bees. Her studio is in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.

website: jennylamacchia.com
instagram: @jennylacampbell

©2024 Jenny LaMacchia Campbell All Rights Reserved

Hailing from Northern New Jersey, Alicia Sampson Ethridge has been living, working and creating in Maine since 2008. She works primarily in mixed-media collage and oil paint. Her art is grounded in a contemplative arts practice. She was initiated in the Interspiritual Order of Art Monastics in 2014. Ethridge believes that art healing and as humans we possess the ability to heal ourselves through creating. As a child she found solace in her sketchbooks, a space to explore and understand her inner world. As a social worker she employed expressive arts in a therapeutic setting to heal collective loss and trauma. When her son was born with congenital heart disease and ultimately needed a life saving heart transplant it was a call for #heART to friends, families and strangers that buoyed her son’s spirit. His hospital room walls were covered in art, a physical manifestation of hope for his healing and the abundance of love supporting him. When his body had physically healed and his care required less intensive support Ethridge returned to painting to process the immensity of this experience. Yearning for community and new approaches to her work Ethridge attended Maine College of Art’s Continuing Studies Program. She met a group of abstract painters who after two seasons of painting together decided to found SEVEN artists collective. Ethridge’s current work explores themes of maternal experiences, emotional landscapes, identity, ancestry, resilience, and the magic we find in our everyday existence. Her studio is based at the Bakery Studios in Portland, ME.

Through figuration and abstraction Ethridge paints vibrant dreamlike scenes of her ancestors, habitat, family and herself. Sourcing photographs, sacred objects, letters from grandmothers, and memories she makes small watercolor and collage studies to inform her larger oil paintings. She uses contemplative art practices to divine a unique lexicon; rosa rugosa, deer, superheroes, birds among other icons. These characters explore the intersection of the physical world and dream world in her canvases. With the help of these spiritual allies Ethridge’s marks and the scenes conjured help to release anxiousness about current challenges and heal generational traumas. Her work also serves as a portal to the future, a renewed and inspired vision of herself, her children and their progeny.

Michel Droge - mentor to SEVEN - is a painter and printmaker whose work engages with the environment and the human condition in an era of uncertainty. Inspired by the landscape, mapping and environmental research, their large scale abstract paintings unravel existing grids and structures and make way for new ones that are emerging. In an effort to de-master the landscape they model a queer matrix in conversation with nineteenth century landscape schools and naturalists.

An element of Michel’s practice is collaborative engagement with scientific researchers, conservation groups and communities including the Bigelow Laboratories, Eastport Health Care, and Maine Audubon, as well as ongoing collaboration with their partner and archaeologist Sarah Loftus.

Michel is the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation award, a co-recipient of a Kindling Fund grant and three Maine Arts Commission grants. They have been awarded fellowships and residencies at Surfpoint, Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, Hewnoaks Residency, The Tides Institute, The Joseph Fiore Foundation, The Stephen Pace House and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Their work has been included in national and international exhibitions amongst which include The Cue Art Foundation, Bates College Art Museum, University of Maine, Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA, Maine Jewish Museum, Boston University and Brandeis University.

Celeste June Henriquez is a painter exploring the internal and external environments of family and home. Inspired by parenting her daughter, Abigail, who has an intellectual disability Henriquez has been developing a body of work that addresses the beauty and challenges of being a caregiver.

Celeste received her BFA from Philadelphia College of Art in Illustration and worked nationally as a freelance illustrator in advertising, editorial, and children's books. Recent exhibitions have been with the Portland Museum of Art, River Arts Gallery, Frank Brockman Gallery, Harlow Gallery, and Zero Station. She lives and works in Portland, Maine.

I am an artist living on the coast of Maine.

Coming from both knowledge and intuition, my abstract paintings are the result of digging into layers of oil paint, seeking intersections and connections of lines and shapes, and examining emotional connections to color.

I like to come upon the small and often unnoticed; to pull together a composition that is puzzling; to spill color over a surface. My paintings eventually go where they want to go.

My creative practice evolves from my love of the sea, the woods, memories of a childhood embraced by a close Greek/Italian family, and paying attention to the news. Music, poetry, a single word...the colors on my palette...they can all begin a painting.

When I was young I wanted to be either an astronomer or an archaeologist -- in my studio I believe I am both

My studio is tucked in the woods by the sea in Harpswell, Maine where I hope to work to a ripe old age.

Brenda Overstrom’s paintings are about layers and layering - words, marks and colors. She begins the process by writing, drawing or painting on the surface - paper, canvas or panel. The words are revelations from dreams, drawings are abstractions inspired by something she’s experienced in the natural world or by her own unconscious. However, some of her work expresses the pain and anguish of inequality for many as expressed in her series of red paintings. During the process of adding, layering and often wiping off color, some of what she considers to be the most beautiful areas are hidden just under the surface.

Brenda Overstrom has studied with Nicholas Carone, James Bohary, Susan Walp , Lennart Anderson, Sonia Gechtoff among others.

The language and infinity of abstraction resonates within me. People, place and time heavily influence my work.

Truchas NM, a Spanish land grant town frozen in 1952, is dream-like and seemingly floats above the high desert. For over a decade, I visited to study, reflect and paint with my recently deceased dear friend and mentor, Alvaro Cardona-Hine.

His counsel is a constant in my art.

I live on the coast of Maine, a place of amazing beauty and stark contradiction. Always changing yet ever steady.

Increasingly, I appreciate how time offers perspective. As a result, my art has become more introspective and personal.

I work with intent, sometimes abandon, but always enthusiasm. My purpose is to open a dialogue, to offer a starting point.

Make of it what you will and what your imagination will allow.