ROCKLAND — Archipelago Fine Arts Gallery, 386 Main Street, invites the public to two receptions for “In Pursuit of Coastal Light,” a spring show of work by Gary Hoyle of Swan’s Island and Andrea Peters of East Boothbay. The show will run through May 31, with the first reception scheduled for Friday, May 3 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. during the season’s first Arts in Rockland (AIR) First Friday Artwalk. The second reception will be on Friday, May 24, also 5-8 p.m.
Gary Hoyle’s nearly 40-year career has spanned the breadth of museum exhibit work from research to exhibit fabrications. His sculptures and paintings have been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States as well as at the Amori Prefecture Museum in Japan. He is currently working on a series of “islandscapes” as he explores the varying effects of natural light throughout the seasons, using oil pigments that shift only very slightly as the paint dries. Hoyle is now a consultant for the College of the Atlantic’s Dorr Museum in Bar Harbor, and the show at Archipelago is the first significant display of his “islandscapes” in Maine.
Andrea Peters’ interest in the natural world finds its muse just outside the front door—and the back door—of her cottage between Glen Cove and the working harbor of Little River. Her oil landscapes on gessoed birch panels also reflect the changing seasons—from the blues and violets of winter scenes to the riotous summer hues of hydrangea, lupine and yarrow under impossibly blue skies. Her technique has become more abstract over the years as she has explored positive and negative space, applying paint without any underdrawing.
As she stated in a 2010 article in Down East magazine, “I’m usually affected by what I’m looking at, but I don’t stay with it. It’s a jumping-off point—I feel it and just allow it to happen. I like the energy, the strength, the physical aspects of painting.”
Please visit www.thearchipelago.net to view an online gallery of images from the show. Current gallery hours for Archipelago Fine Arts are 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Tuesday through Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Saturdays, and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sundays. For more information, please contact Lisa Mossel Vietze, manager of Archipelago, at 596-0701 or lvietze@islandinstitute.org.