Tom Paiement: The Anxiety of Possibilities
October 6 - 29, 2022
Opening Reception: Thurs., Oct. 6, 5-7 pm
Paul Klee, when asked what his painting was about, replied:
It is about line
It is about color
It is about form
In my 22 year affiliation with Greenhut my work has always been about these three elements.
The search for beauty is infinite in scope with endless solutions in every direction. It leads to such giants as Willem DeKooning scratching his head and declaring art as the anxiety of possibilities. In November of last year, while in Salt Lake City for a month, I started a series of flower drawings. Being away from my studio and having limited space to work I decided to use colored pencils on 14 x 14 inch drawing paper. I enjoy the challenges always present when drawing from life, and also enjoyed the respite from inventing line, inventing color and inventingform which, in much of my previous work, had been required. With the flowers, those elements were presented to me. It was simply a matter of looking, focusing, and meditating on the experience. Very zen like.
Back in my studio in Maine, I continued the flower theme but pushed it into a new direction, a less literal, looser interpretation. Moving from paper and pencil to wood panels and oil paints, I could add texture to the work and allow the process of working and reworking to be evident. Some of the paintings focus entirely on texture, color and form and some, as in much of my other work, no matter the subject I have settled on or the approach, are overlaid with a defining black line. In the last paintings I finished before this exhibition, the drawing and painting seem to collide into one. As always, the possibilities of where to go next are endless.
~ Tom Paiement
Tom Paiement received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maine. After working in the aerospace industry for years, he decided to explore the creative process offering him an aesthetic outlet missing from his mathematical and scientific work. After earning his M.F.A. in Printmaking at the University of Iowa in 1985 under the tutelage of Mauricio Lasansky, Tom taught at Hamline University in St. Paul. Tom returned to Maine to paint full time and for 30 years he has exhibited extensively. His work is represented in private and public collections.
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Alison Rector
Studio Daze
I’m currently painting in a studio workspace in Portland. For the past 18 months, I’ve been watching the light moving through my workspace as time passes. I’ve made lots of paintings observing what I see. Hour by hour the light moves across the room through windows and doors. The view of the city beyond the windows changes.
These paintings are meditations on being in the studio. My workspace is a retreat and a sanctuary. People live, work, think and rest in these spaces. The human story is part of the painting.
~ Alison Rector
Painter and printmaker Alison Rector specializes in recreating interiors. She paints public establishments such as bowling alleys, laundromats, and post offices or the private spaces within a home, showing us passages into other rooms and glimpses of the outdoors. Occasionally her work focuses on a building within a landscape, a study of a place and a moment in time. Rector renders unconventional beauty and a special quality of light by way of a resonant realism.
In 2017, the Ogunquit Museum of American Art exhibited a solo show of 18 of Rector’s paintings of public libraries titled The Value of Thought. Her paintings were selected for the 2003 Portland Museum of Art Biennial and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art’s 50th anniversary invitational in 2002. Her work has been included in 3 art books by Carl Little; Artist Conversations, Maine Arts Magazine, a Maine Arts Commission publication; The Gettysburg Review, featured artist in the Autumn 2008 issue. Rector earned an undergraduate degree from Brown University in Providence RI, including courses at the Rhode Island School of Design.
