ARTIST'S STATEMENT:

Drawing and painting have been an important part of my life since I was a very young child. My father would bring home old reports, the paper printed on one side and I would spend endless hours filling the other side with my sketches. As a child and then in art school I painted mostly people, having always been fascinated with the observation of people. After I moved to Maine in 1975 I found myself drawn to the beauty of the landscape and the natural world. I became a landscape painter.

The Maine landscape has had a major influence on my work as it is here in Maine that I began to paint my surroundings- to develop my language that enables me to interpret and communicate on canvas and paper what I see and feel as I daily look about me. My landscapes are stages upon which I interpret form, color, and movement. I paint because it provides me great pleasure and it connects me with my natural world. It allows me to make sense of my environment through the coherent and wordless language of painting. I attempt to portray not just what I see but how I see it - transforming the landscape into my own unique interpretation.

The landscape is ever changing and I find myself viewing the same scenes in seemingly infinite ways, depending on the season, time of day, and my own mood at the time of the painting. Intuitively I am responding to nature as it presents fascinating combinations of land, sky, water and light. Whether I am looking out my studio window, driving into town, walking, or traveling I am envisioning paintings- and this is where I get my "material" from which I create my works. It is this sudden revelation in a familiar place- that moment of clarity when what has been seen often is seen as if for the first time that I seek. When I travel outside the Maine/Canadian Maritime region I find that it takes several trips before I befriend the landscape; it is only after I am thoroughly engaged with the landscape that I am able to paint.

EDUCATION:

B.F.A. City University of New York, 1973

Have also studied at:

Maryland School of Art, Silver Spring, Maryland

Corcoran School of Art, Washington, D.C.

Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine

Round Top Center for the Arts, Damariscotta, Maine

EXHIBITS:

North Light Gallery, Gallery Artist, 2006

Phoenix Gallery, Belfast, Maine, October 2005

UMVA Annual Juried Show, Blum Gallery, College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, Maine, 2004

Ports of Call Juried Show, Maine Arts Commission, Augusta, Maine, 2003

Tenth Anniversary Invitational, Gibbs Library, Washington, Maine, 2003

"Six Women Engage the Maine Landscape", Maine Center for Contemporary Art, Rockport, Maine, 2003

"Past, Present, Future- 50th Anniversary Invitational", Maine Center for Contemporary Art, Rockport, Maine, 2002

Downtown Art Gallery, Washington, Maine, 1996-2006

Back Roads Gallery, Damariscotta, Maine, 2000-2003

Three Fish Gallery, Portland, Maine, Group Show, 2000

Bowdoin College, Group Show, Brunswick, Maine 2000

Hannabels Restaurant, Union, Maine, 1997 and 2000

Blaine House, Augusta, Maine, "Inland Landscapes", 1998 and Gallery Exhibit, 2002

Camden Public Library, Camden Maine, "Gardens, Toads and Poetry", 1997

Round Top Center for the Arts, Damariscotta, Maine, Group Shows, 1993-2001

Gibbs Library, Washington, Maine, 1994, 1995, 1996

Aroostook Band and Trust, Caribou, Maine "Recent Works", 1976

Women's InterArt Center, NY, NY, 1973

Gallery, H.H. Lehman College, NY,NY, 1972 & 1973

Workmen's Circle Community Center, NY,NY, 1972

COMMISSIONS:

Governor Angus King and First Lady Mary Herman, Blaine House Christmas Card, 2001

Off the Coast Poetry Journal, Covers, 2000-2003

Work is also in Numerous Private Collections

All images © Joan Freiman