ROCKLAND — America Martin’s 2024 show “Outdoors Until Dusk” at Carver Hill Gallery's Rockland Pop-Up space is a reflection of time spent in Maine with family and friends and a new daughter. The show will open during Rockland’s First Friday Artwalk, August 2, with a reception with the artist from 5 - 7 pm., at 20 Winter Street, across from CMCA.

Refreshments will be served and Martin will meet attendees and answer questions. The show will feature 12 brand new oil paintings, 16 framed works on paper, and 4 sculptures. 

“As always, America's line work is assertive and energetic – fiercely strong and confident – but the dripping, intentional crazing and rough-edge lines have given way to cleaner lines and solid, geometric color blocks without much blending or shading,” said Carver Hill, in a news release. “Her dark linework is further emphasized by outlines and shadow lines (that are etched with even more lines) creating linear ‘spaces’ that make up the human forms. No matter how you turn the paintings they are interesting compositions and abstractions that often resemble stained glass windows.”

According to Martin: This current show feels perhaps a bit more narrative than past exhibitions - sea sirens, beaches, mermaid’s stories told by creatures - happy yellows and dogs in canoes. The hues remind me of when you stay out of doors ‘til the dusk and bugs drive you in. These pieces are happy thoughts, stories I have remembered and made up, bits of sunshine and salt and sea that I put on canvas. They express the quiet joy of things that make me think of Maine.

I first came to Maine to exhibit with Carver Hill Gallery many years ago. Soon after, I ended up spending a few weeks on North Haven Island painting in the former studio of the late American Impressionist Frank Benson. It was magical – this beautiful estate was a place where dreams were pulled down from the ether and turned into things that can be seen, touched and shared. On the walls were the wiped colors of Benson’s brush and the large glass windows let the light flood the barn in yellow glory. Standing in this Benson barn having long known his work, I felt that I now knew him as an artist. Why he wanted to be here was apparent; time and space on this island was tangibly different from other places I had been.

Mornings come fast in Maine - the colors break, and lose their mistiness, and you discover yellow ocher, viridian, zinc white and Prussian blue. I like getting down to the water before the lobstermen to ask questions and learn things about why they do what they do, etc. They ask me questions like why I ask so many questions.

As fate would have it, I married a man from Maine who was living out West. Now we end up visiting for longer periods of time and I have come to understand and love this place in a more personal and romantic way.

OUTDOORS UNTIL DUSK runs through September 2, 2024. FMI: AMERICA MARTIN - Outdoors Until Dusk - Solo show in the Yellow Barn Pop-Up Space, Rockland, Maine | CARVER HILL GALLERY