Coatroom Exhibition Exiting - OMMA Opening

Coatroom Exhibition Exiting

At the 2019 season members opening night
for the Ogunquit Museum of American Art
by the sea in Ogunquit , Maine,
on May 2, 1019, painted May 2, 2019
10" x 8" (w x h) , Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade
proof ink on 140 lb. Arches cold press rough 100% cotton watercolor paper
Private Collection
 

At the member opening of the 2019 season
of the Ogunquit Museum of American Art
in Ogunquit, Maine, May 2, 2019
The Museum Web Site HERE

1
Seascape
Harmon Neill (1896-1981)
Oil on paper board, 1943
Collection of OMAA

This is a view from Marginal Way along Ogunquit near the home of Joseph Davol, a painter, which was painted seventy-six years ago in 1943. I know Marginal Way, having painted many watercolors along The Way, some on view HERE. I was taken by Harmon Neill's timeless painting. It could've been painted days ago, or at least looked that way. I was lost in thought, admiring it, and musing about it being more than three-quarters of a century old. I chatted with the woman next to me, who was also admiring it. Was I ever in for a surprise? She was a painter.

2
Evelyn Harper 

Not only was Evelyn Harper a painter, but she was the widow of Seascape's painter, Harmon Neill, admiring her late husband's fine art on this opening night, his art out and on display for this season. Evelyn was a charming delight.

3
The OMMA Maine Gallery
with a picture view to the Gulf of Maine,
everyone standing on a beautiful new
wooden floor, taking in the food,
art, and cell phone calls.

4
Art is Where You Find It
Performance art in the main gallery by
a performer standing next to me.

5
First Art School Drawing
Henry Strater (1896-1987)
Charcoal on laid paper
Collection of OMAA

"Artist and collector Henry Strater purchased land in Ogunquit formerly owned by Charles Herbert Woodbury, who is widely credited with founding the art colony in the village. Initially founded by Strater as The Museum of Art of Ogunquit, the institution was incorporated in 1951 with a mission for 'the broad educational interests of the public.' Strater commissioned architect Charles S. Worley Jr. to design the building it is housed in. The museum opened its doors to the public in 1953." -source Wiki

7

Untitled (Sailboat)
William Thon (1906-2000)
Mixed media, circa 1965
At OMAA courtesy of a private collector

8
The Witchery of the Moonbeams
Edward Henry Potthast (1857-1927)
Oil on canvas, circa 1906
At OMAA courtesy of a private lender

Ogunquit Museum of Art label paragraph:
"The title comes from a 1901 novel by Roy Rolfe Gilson, When Love is Young, which includes the following lines in chapter thirty-eight: . . .'and now and then he plucks a flower and gives it to her -- sweet-petaled eloquence of what he cannot speak -- and now she turns her eyes to him, shining like stars, while all about her is the witchery of the moonbeams and in his soul the witchery of a dream.'"

Rev Roy Rolfe Gilson (1875-1933) was a newspaper man then a novelist and then a rector of parishes in New Hampshire, Maine and finally St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Salisbury, Maryland, where he passed away at the age of fifty-eight. When Love is Young was his first of eight books and many short stories, its first line, "School is out." You can read it online via Ohio State and Google HERE.

He said of this book: "The best known of my works is, and is not a child's book, but an attempt to preserve in words something of that exquisite loveliness of the American home as it has been in its simplicity, and never more beautiful than when seen through the eyes of a little child, to whom the father is a hero and the mother a heroine, and even the toy soldiers have an identity and name...
It is never the bizarre or unusual that makes me wish to work, but the poetry and comedy in everyday life, in the common lot...If my stories are idyllic, it is not because I wish to write pretty things, but because I have a friendly eye for those secret quests on which we pass each other disguised in foolishness, but wearing beneath a lovely raiment of dreams." 

9
Three Sails on Blue
Katherine Bradford (1942- )
Oil on canvas, 2006
At OMAA courtesy of Monica Dominak