The New Abstraction

June 6 - July 26, 2025
Reception: Friday, June 6, 5-8pm
Talks: Friday, 5-8pm, June 27 + July 18

Deb Dawson
Bryan Graff
Carol Eisenberg
Tara Sellios
Paul Rider
Luc Demers
Rush Brown
John Gintoff
Joan Fitzsimmons
Caroline Savage
Andrew O’Brien
Brenton Hamilton

Caroline Savage

Moving from the precision of photographers Ansel Adams, Aaron Siskind and Minor White, the romance of Imogen Cunningham to the experimentation of filmmakers Marie Menken, Hollis Frampton and Malcolm Le Grice,I honed my craft at the San Francisco Art Institute, immersed in possibilities of painting with light, time and motion. Musicians John Cage and Steve Reich introduced me to chance, strategy and synchronicity to discover and reveal the harmonic sound patterns in nature. I make landscapes that are based on formal associations of interconnected moving light, line, and color which open a unique poetic vein. Multilayered images arise in which the fragility and instability of our seemingly certain reality is questioned. By applying abstraction allowing the camera to record light and movement, I investigate the dynamics of landscape. Rather than presenting a factual reality, I create sequences which reveal an inseparable relationship between motion, light and space. By questioning the visual concept of movement, I formalize the coincidental and emphasize the aleatory process of color and light composition. - Caroline Savage

“I have lived in Port Said Egypt, Karachi, Pakistan; London, England; Arlington, Virginia, Dobbs Ferry, New York and San Francisco and Pacifica, California, and Carlisle, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Currently, I live in Portland, Maine. I travel by airplane, train, car, ship and foot across landscapes, terrains always in flux, our transient geography. This shaped my interest in noticing and experiencing the landscapes as a voyeur and flaneur of the transitory world. Light, time, space, chemical and physical processes became my artistic tool.” - C.S.

Joan Fitzsimmons

Joan Fitzsimmons, Blue Moon series 1-20, 2015 - 2016, Cyanotype, 17 x 22 inches, $750 each

While evidencing a minimalist abstraction, my Blue Moons are grounded in a reality, my reality. Feeling a bit overwhelmed by the accumulation of negatives, both silver and digital, that I may never have the time to print, inspired by a ‘throw-away’ photogram that began to hold magic for me, I commenced. I never knew what a blue moon was. I loved the song. I knew the phrase, “Once in a blue moon”. A few years ago, a blue moon occurred, a rare occurrence, two full moons in one month. The media gave a full explanation. I realized that my photograms of simple bowls of yogurt, looked like moons. They could be blue moons! There is no great theory to this work. There is an attraction to the simplicity of the process and the magic of imagination. The images in the  Blue Moon series are all unique, hand-toned photograms on gelatin silver paper. As a true Futurist of the past, Sun Ra, once said, “Space is the Place.” - J. F.

Joan Fitzsimmons is a fine art photographer whose constructed digital images blur the line between painting and photography, drawing upon the polarities of beauty and decay, the natural and the human-made. Her compositions begin with originally sourced imagery selected from photographs she shoots in the studio or on location near her homes in Maine and Israel and on her travels. The images exist in an abstract realm that unites intentional creation with a fluid, intuitive approach to composition and color. 

Paul Rider

Photography is exceptional at creating documents of fleeting objects, which then stand as a record for what was lost, similar to Stieglitz's photograph of Duchamps’s ‘Fountain’. Working with creating sculptures that are meant only to be captured by the camera, the documentation of the temporariness of these objects - packing material, now becomes a monument to our culture’s consumption habits. Thus preserving these objects for future generations to observe and study. - P. R.

Paul Rider is a Philadelphia based artist having earned his BFA in Photography from Philadelphia College of Art, Philadelphia, PA., (now University of the Arts), and his MFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art & Design, Savannah, GA. Working in discrete series, Rider creates his imagery by constructing still life in the studio utilizing found objects and also through the use of abstract and documentary photographic styles. One compelling theme that has driven his work, is the interface and struggle between nature and manmade urban culture.

John Gintoff

These work are a group of photo collages comprised of found and original images. Recently, I have begun to draw over the collages. These comprise the second group; and the drawn areas are actually the photo’s title written in Russian utilizing the Cyrillic Alphabet in various colors, widths and transparencies. Also included are a group of sculptures made of my crumpled photographs, packing tape, books and copper tubing. J.G.

MFA in Photography from Temple University, Philadelphia, PA  and grants from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts (2 times), 20” x 24” Polaroid Studio, Polaroid Corporation, NYC, NY (3 times) and the Aetna Insurance Co. Hartford, CT. Taught college and High school level photography, painting and sculpture. Work has been published and in many collections. 

Luc Demers

Rush Brown

Tara Sellios

I strive to create images that elegantly articulate the totality of existence, focusing heavily on life’s underlying instinctive, carnal nature in the face of fragility and impermanence. The concept of morality in relation to mortality has possessed a significant presence within the history of art, ranging from religious altarpiece imagery to the work of the vanitas painters. Manifesting melancholic themes with beauty, precision and seduction forces the viewer to look, despite its grotesque and morbid nature. Through these images, I aspire to make apparent the restlessness of a life that is knowingly so temporary and vulnerable.

Ask Now the Beasts derives its title from the Biblical text of Job. The symbolism in these frames conjure ideas of the cyclical nature of the earth in relation to the concept of the harvest. Once a time of prosperity, richness and eroticism, the offerings here are withered on the vine. Light strikes from the left as if to indicate the passage of days grown too long. The earth passes away, but that is not to say that there is no hope - suffering and death leads to transcendence and transformation. Within the dance between light and darkness, beauty and celebration can still be found. These images, reminiscent of an altarpiece structure, are wrought with complex references and allusions to stained glass windows, illuminated manuscripts, and other genres of religious imagery intended for meditation, storytelling and reverence. T.S.

Andrew O’Brien

The three images are titled Give, Control and Sympathize. Their title comes from the Upanishad’s in which the Lord of all creation spoke a single syllable, “Da,”  and it was interpreted by humans as to give and by gods to control themselves and by demons to sympathize.  This was later echoed in T.S. Eliot’s poem the Wasteland in the section entitled “What the Thunder Said.” To me, it gives light to the idea that the same utterance can be interpreted many different ways. -Andrew O’Brien

Wasteland
What the Thunder Said, by T.S. Eliott

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon - O swallow swallow Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih

Andrew O’Brien is a Maine based artist specializing in lens-based arts and photography. His work primarily delves into abstraction and coloration, often challenging conventional perspectives and revealing what is seen beyond its apparent subject matter. He studied at both Yale and Colby College and has degrees in architecture and literature.

Brenton Hamilton

Brenton Hamilton, Sailor Daydreaming, 2025, Cyanotype collage on paper, 11 x 12 inches, $800.

Brenton Hamilton, Imperiled Flag, 2025, Cyanotype on Belgian Linen, 15 x 12 inches, $600.

My latest works from the studio help me bridge transitions, something that I experience after large exhibitions. How can I evolve this work and merge the cyanotype method into an interrogation of new ideas ? How can I make a new image, that is my own? A Sailor and History, A Flag and the Contemporary - merging various interests in the materials and my surrealist impulses, I've been making a series of collage based works and applying cyanotype on Belgian linen. Both of these pictures are images of peril (The Flag work). Cultural peril and the perils and odyssey of life (The Sailor piece). The flag piece (Imperiled Flag) - is exactly as it states. An embellished cyanotype, a flag in reversal, sewn, repaired, "decorated" - oen installed draped and folded. It's a new object with a distinct cultural critique. The sailor on paper, floats and swirls in a tempest of marks and emotion and turbulence. Elements I have pursued in creative work for decades. -B. H.

For over three decades,  Brenton Hamilton has created a sustained body of work, largely concentrated within historic process. Especially gum bichromated forms, platinum, the embellished cyanotype, and collodion on black glass, during these decades,  he has produced a unique body of work. Shaping a large catalog of embellished stories using the vocabulary of surrealism,  revealing his thoughts and musings and life's upheaval.

Bryan Graff

Bryan Graf (b. 1982) lives and works in Portland, Maine. He received an M.F.A from Yale University in 2008 and a B.F.A. from the Art Institute of Boston in 2005. His first solo museum show, Moving Across the Interior, was on view at the ICA@MECA in Portland, Maine through April 2014. Grafʼs work has recently featured in Second Nature: Abstract Photography Then and Now at the Decordova Sculpture Park and Museum, and The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation at the Loeb Art Center at Vassar College. Grafʼs work has appeared in numerous publications, including Blind Spot and The New York Times. He is the subject of three monographs: Wildlife Analysis (Conveyor, 2013), Moving Across the Interior (ICA@MECA, 2014), and Prismatic Tracks (Conveyor, 2014).

Deb Dawson

Look deeply into every drop of water to find the universe within. This phrase seems to have settled into my psyche as I continue to walk coastal paths throughout the year. As I wander and wonder, I keep trying to look closer at natural forms to find something… An understanding of how the world works… and survives. Shapes and patterns in fluid realms seem to reveal common bonds between earth and sky. One day in January, after a sequence of warm then frigid days, I ventured onto a frozen pond. It was like stepping out of a space capsule into the stars. Looking, closer, more deeply into the ice, I received an epiphany. For a brief moment, I felt that the unifying theory of everything was within my grasp. Then, the realization that frostbite was taking over, as I had been kneeling on the ice for nearly an hour, lost in thought, making these photographs. - D. D.

Deb Dawson was introduced to Maine 30 years ago while honing her photographic eye and craft at Maine Media Workshops + College before completing her BFA in Photography with a minor in Art History at the University of Southern Maine. Embarking on a series of adventures as an archaeological and museum photographer in Carthage, Tunisia, she later returned to explore Maine’s craggy coast building an off-grid homestead, working in graphic design, then earning her merchant mariner captain’s license. This time, living close to the land and sea solidified Dawson’s deep appreciation for the natural environment. To better tell the story of the changing landscape and coastal communities, Dawson developed her narrative voice at SALT Institute of Documentary Studies at MECA&D in 2018. These varied experiences now seem to coalesce into a poetic vision, conveying Dawson’s sense of awe at the beauty found while contemplatively observing our changing world.

Carol Eisenberg

These dreamlike landscapes were inspired by my recent trip to Japan. I was captivated by the urban atmosphere of Tokyo, where water, flora and fauna coexist with the shiny metal surfaces of civilization. I was enchanted by the shrines, temples, gardens and bamboo forests of Kyoto, and the dramatic beauty of Naoshima in the Seto Inland Sea. Blurring the distinction between painting and photography, my images resist conventional notions of what a photograph should be. Their visual language is one of layering and collage, a fusion of disparate elements that are simultaneously cohesive and contradictory. Within the same image, surfaces are translucent, opaque, three-dimensional, and flat. Color is used both naturally and expressively. Pictorial content is drawn from the natural environment and the constructed world. Central to these dualities is my lifelong engagement with feminism, particularly the struggle against rigid gender roles and the conflicted embrace of beauty, with its capacity for damage. - C.E.

Carol Eisenberg is a fine art photographer whose constructed digital images blur the line between painting and photography, drawing upon the polarities of beauty and decay, the natural and the human-made. Her compositions begin with originally sourced imagery selected from photographs she shoots in the studio or on location near her homes in Maine and Israel and on her travels. The images exist in an abstract realm that unites intentional creation with a fluid, intuitive approach to composition and color.