On view now
built. Fitzgerald’s paintings—of gulls, for example—show the birds as interlocking forms, their wings made angular, outlined, and shot through with light and color like stained glass windows.this is the light of the sea, and by the sea, blinding light and dark light, reflected light and light through water, split into rays, patterns, and shapes ever moving over, under and through one another.
And then Jan Mccartin’s mysterious pastel, Figure by an Inlet, stares back at us, reminding us of Winslow Homer’s paintings of watchful women on windswept shores while correcting Homer’s 19th-century male gaze.we assume the figure is a woman, but nothing, apart from a hint in the figure’s shape, says it must be a woman. Nothing says the figure is looking away from us.the color of the silhouette, purple outlined in black, is suggestive of the Victorian era, but it may just be a trick of the light falling around the figure. The little point opposite the inlet touches the figure, but it may be too deep to cross.tell whatever a story you like, the work undercuts it every time and forces you in a new direction.the figure may, just as easily, have stepped out of the water, like Botticelli’s Venus. And so, in 2020, we take an impossible flight in our unlikely Charger, to Maine and back again. If such flights of fancy become our flights to art in fact, Maine is as good a place to start as any, and better than most.there’s just time enough for that Shipyard Ale somewhere by the water, and a chance to talk over all we’ve seen, and we plan to see, on our next visit.
Portland Museum of Art
7 Congress Square Portland, ME 04101
(207) 775-6148, www.portlandmuseum.org
Farnsworth Art Museum
16 Museum Street
Rockland, ME 04841
(207) 596-6457, www.farnsworthmuseum.org