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KEN GREENLEAF

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Jeff Epstein’s intimate paintings of the everyday

Jeff Epstein’s intimate paintings of the everyday
Jeff Epstein’s show is a group of small paintings in a small room at the end of a small alley in Portland, but it opens questions that are valuable and substantial.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | October 30, 2013

What we can learn from Frederick Lynch and William Manning

Respect your elders
Both Frederick Lynch and William Manning are in their late 70s, both have taught others, and, more important, both have had a consistent arc over their long working careers. You can spot and identify works by either artist from a distance.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | October 03, 2013

Jeff Badger looks up, down, and all around

Aerial boundaries
The show is largely works on paper, and mostly funny and sometimes a little creepy, and often both.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | September 06, 2013

Exploring a massive expansion at Colby’s museum

The wonder of Lunder
The Alfond-Lunder Family Pavilion at the Colby College Museum of art, just opened, has added some 66 percent to the museum’s existing exhibition space, to a total now of some 38,000 square feet. With the gift of the 500 or so objects from the Lunder Collection, it means they can fill the space without breaking into a sweat.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | August 08, 2013

A shoreward look at Maurice Prendergast’s career

Growing up by the sea
Maurice Brazil Prendergast (1858-1924) has been something of a problematic figure for those of us who grew up in the long shadow of modernism.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | July 10, 2013

George Mason’s latest focus is deep and broad

Acts of awareness
George Mason has been a familiar presence in art in Maine for decades. His work is found in public places, schools, and private collections, but he hasn't often shown significant groupings of work in Portland.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | June 13, 2013

PMA show highlights MoMA’s influence

Defining the canon
It's a peculiarly American irony that the same man who basically invented the advertising model for the business of broadcasting radio and later television would have amassed a significant collection of modernist art.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | May 16, 2013

Stop making sense

The implied narratives of Per Kirkeby
The current show by the highly-acclaimed Danish artist Per Kirkeby at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art is a broad survey of his work, with examples of his paintings and sculpture from the 1960s up to a few years ago.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | April 17, 2013

Marking mud time in Portland galleries

An afternoon’s wander
Galleries tend to hunker down for the annual Maine economic recession, and are more or less vamping until full spring. Which is OK, since they are often picking from gallery inventory, and they have some good things.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | March 20, 2013

Crossing the sea to go below the surface

Have ideas, will travel
The world is, as Tom Friedman has noted, flat, which doesn't take much label-reading to ascertain.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | February 20, 2013

Lois Dodd’s first career retrospective showcases a bright abstractionist

A brilliant example
"Lois Dodd: Catching the Light" is the kind of show that reminds you why you got interested in art in the first place. The paintings are terrific and the big, first-floor gallery at the Portland Museum of Art has never looked better.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | January 23, 2013

Two fantastic new painters at Aucocisco

Just getting started
The hardest thing about starting an art career is finding your own voice.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | December 12, 2012

Older pieces lend perspective to modern world

Back and forward
Events in the art business have been evoking the past for me these days, a function, I suppose, of accumulating high mileage.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | October 31, 2012

Taking an observation on Winslow Homer’s oeuvre

Blown away
"Weatherbeaten: Winslow Homer and Maine," a show of more than 30 Homer works depicting Maine and the sea, commemorates the opening the newly-restored Homer studio on Prouts Neck.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | October 03, 2012

Jeff Kellar’s work plays with understanding

Having it both ways
Jeff Kellar's work is formal, cool, and reserved, bringing to mind the Dave Brubeck Quartet back in the "Take Five" days, dressed in dark suits and narrow ties with Paul Desmond blowing alto magic under his black horn-rim glasses.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | September 19, 2012

Skip the clichés — this is the real deal

Midcoast modernism
For a few generations now there's been a current of artistic intellectual seriousness in coastal Maine lying obscured beneath the fog of Wyeth popularity and other clichés that fill the galleries, restaurant walls, and roadside stands.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | September 05, 2012

Shows at two museums combine for a real lesson

Three Maine masters
The connections between Frank W. Benson (1862-1951) and Winslow Homer (1836-1910) and the Portland Art Society are pretty straightforward.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | August 15, 2012

PMA looks closely at Normandy

Artistic invasion
Walking across the first gallery at the Portland Museum of Art's fine exhibition, "The Draw of the Normandy Coast: 1860-1960," you encounter three paintings of the same subject that outline three of the different ways of thinking that were part of artistic life in the period.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | July 11, 2012

Catch the summer art buzz

Onward and upward
Some parts of Portland may get quiet in the summer, but there's plenty action in the art biz. And lots of cruise-ship visitors this year to quicken the streets a bit.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | June 06, 2012

Emily Nelligan inspires at Bowdoin

Seriously committed
My friend the late Sidney Tillim has been much on my mind in recent weeks.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | May 09, 2012

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