The A.D. Gallery at UNC Pembroke will present a solo exhibition of the work of Gail Spaien, beginning Thursday, Aug. 29.
The exhibition, Cottage Bonzai, will be on display through September 27. An opening reception will be held at 12:30 p.m. on August 29. The A.D. Gallery is located in Locklear Hall.
Inspired by a summer stay in a rustic generational Maine home on an island in Casco Bay, this new series of paintings tells a love story of place and season.
Capturing the essence of hypnotic vistas on a reduced scale, the paintings are bonsais of lived experience. Compressing the magical qualities of space and time, Spaien reframes the view to suggest the desire for, and the impossibility of sustaining such perfect conditions.
Featured are paintings fresh from a summer showing at the Nancy Margolis Gallery in New York, as well as site-specific installation completed by the artist that will last only for the duration of this exhibition.
Spaien has been the recipient of numerous fellowships including the Djerassi Foundation Resident Artists Program in Woodside, CA; Millay Colony for the Arts, Austerlitz, NY; and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
A professor of painting and core faculty in the MFA program at the Maine College of Art, Spaien received her BFA from the University of Southern Maine and her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She is affiliated with the George Marshall Store Gallery in Maine and Ellen Miller Gallery in Boston.
“Inspired by the symbolism, contradiction and pleasure embedded in the traditions of American folk art, Dutch floral painting of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the landscape paintings of the Hudson River School, I make paintings that depict an idealized view of nature and home,” Spaien said.
“Through the careful construction of a desired view, I paint the world as I would like it to be. Rose-colored glasses are donned, outside disturbances are eliminated and beautiful vistas imagined. Reframing reality, I suggest my desire for and the impossibility of such conditions.”
For more information, contact Gallery Director Joseph Begnaud at 910.521.6405 or email joseph.begnaud@uncp.edu.
