WINTER HARBOR – The Schoodic Education Research Center is featuring an ambitious art installation by renowned East Coast painter George Wardlaw.

The exhibit — “Cycles: Time, Light, Life” — is composed of a series of eight massive canvases inspired by Wardlaw’s visits to Ogunquit during a 24-hour solstice period in June 2000.

Each canvas measures 6-foot-square and shows the changing sea and sky at three-hour intervals beginning at 3 a.m. The times of day are indicated by the quality of light and rotation of each painting.

Wardlaw’s work in geometric abstraction and abstract expressionism is largely inspired by forces of nature. His work is the first formal presentation of fine art since the campus was transformed from a U.S. Navy base in 2010. It’s also the first time that Wardlaw’s “Cycles” series has been shown as a complete installation.

“I am extremely pleased that my ‘Cycles’ series will be showcased for the first time in Maine,” Wardlaw said in a press release. “The inspiration for and development of these paintings grew out of summers spent in Ogunquit, and it is where they will be most at home, although I would like to think that they communicate a universal language.”

Wardlaw, a former assistant chair of the art department at Yale University, has served as chair of the art department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for 17 years. He is represented by the Courthouse Gallery of Fine Art in Ellsworth.

The Schoodic Institute is located in Acadia National Park’s Schoodic Section in Winter Harbor. The exhibition is sponsored by a grant from Acadia Trust.

The exhibit, housed in Schoodic’s Moore Auditorium at 65 Acadia Drive, will run through Labor Day. For more information, go to sercinstitute.org.

 


Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.