may 28 – july 19
Gail Spaien’s practice centers around the concept that paintings are places where variations of time intersect. She demonstrates this belief in her collection of new acrylic-on-linen works created over the past year from her South Portland, ME, studio. Like the items that adorn each room, the paintings themselves become testaments to the meticulous effort and slow work that went into their creation.
Acrylic on linen
48 x 45 inches
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In the mid-1980s, while earning her M.F.A. at the San Francisco Art Institute, Spaien lived on The Mudlark, a small houseboat moored in Galilee Harbor in Sausalito.
Living on the water in this unconventional community—where she learned to sail and “what it means to lead a creative life”—was a seminal experience, charting the course for her art and life. “The inside/outside nature of my work and also the notion of the floating cottage was inspired by my years living, working, and sailing on the water there,” she says.
Living on the water in this unconventional community—where she learned to sail and “what it means to lead a creative life”—was a seminal experience, charting the course for her art and life. “The inside/outside nature of my work and also the notion of the floating cottage was inspired by my years living, working, and sailing on the water there,” she says.
— suzette mcavoy
Acrylic on linen
34 x 36 inches
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Acrylic on linen
52 x 48 inches
Click image for more views
Acrylic on linen
48 x 48 inches
Click image for more views
As an undergraduate at the University of Southern Maine, Spaien studied with the Latvian-émigré artist Juris Ubans, who told her, “The grid is a meditation,” a sentiment she embraced and has long engaged within her work, providing symmetry and balance, and implied infinity.
In a notable recent example, Ram Island Ledge, the interior of the Cliff Island cottage is centered on a large, gridded window, its vertical and horizontal lines reiterated throughout the composition, a dazzlingly harmonic orchestration of rectilinear shapes, with grace notes of curved forms in the braided rug, stout-handled pitcher, vase of flowers, and a sinuous line in the pale tan sky.
In a notable recent example, Ram Island Ledge, the interior of the Cliff Island cottage is centered on a large, gridded window, its vertical and horizontal lines reiterated throughout the composition, a dazzlingly harmonic orchestration of rectilinear shapes, with grace notes of curved forms in the braided rug, stout-handled pitcher, vase of flowers, and a sinuous line in the pale tan sky.
— suzette mcavoy
Acrylic on linen
48 x 45 inches
Click image for more views
Acrylic on linen
48 x 48 inches
Click image for more views
In these still, silent paintings, we hear the soft sound of the artist's brush, the tick of the clock, the rustle of leaves and birdsong, the lap of water against the shore, the incessant buzz of the world held at bay for as long as we are willing to look.
— suzette mcavoy
Acrylic on linen
48 x 48 inches
Click image for more views
Acrylic on linen
48 x 45 inches
Click image for more views
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My paintings are places and I approach them as such. As a painter, I turn my back to the external world and enter the world of the painting. I hope a viewer might do that, too.
— Gail Spaien
Gail Spaien is an American artist and educator based in Maine. She earned her B.F.A. from the University of Southern Maine and her M.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute. Spaien has received numerous fellowships including the Ucross Foundation; Varda Artist Residency Program; Millay Colony for the Arts; the Djerassi Foundation Resident Artists Program; and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Over four decades, Spaien’s work has been exhibited nationwide and abroad, including Taymour Grahne Projects (London); Vardan Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (Lincoln, MA); Provincetown Art Association and Museum (Provincetown, MA); Crocker Art Museum (Sacramento, CA); the Portland Museum of Art (Portland, ME); Ogunquit Museum of American Art (Ogunquit, ME); and Colby College Museum of Art (Waterville, Maine). After thirty years as faculty at the Maine College of Art and Design she is now full-time in the studio.
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