Frost Gully Gallery, 150 Main St., will host an exhibit titled “Laurence Sisson Paintings and Watercolors” from Saturday through June 22.

An opening reception will run from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday.

Describing Sisson as “one of Maine’s great 20th- and 21st-century painters,” Tom Crotty of Frost Gully Gallery describes the exhibit as follows:

After a scholarship to the Yale summer school in 1948 and 1949, Sisson came to Maine at the age of 21. He had fallen in love with Maine, like many artists.

He settled in Boothbay and did just about everything and anything to make a living. He had his own marvelous improvisational piano renditions of many of the popular post-war classics and found a few gigs around that area during the season.

But the artist also did all the other sorts of work that one could find. One of the interesting residues of his early life in Boothbay is the number of small paintings and watercolors Sisson traded for food, clothing, medical services and anything he needed. Most are still there, handed down in families and treasured as mementos of some very special relationships.

Lonny, as he likes being called, was certainly a prodigy. His first paintings in 1950 were very strong renditions of the local landscape — oils with a certain Vermeer quality of light and substance. Before long he was experimenting with a wide range of styles and subjects.

The approach led to amazing paintings that covered a wide spectrum of visual possibilities — from Dali-like, magical, surreal images to strong, rich abstract renditions inspired by the tide pools at Southport.

The hard work, passion and talent soon brought recognition and opportunities. The prestigious Vose gallery in Boston made his work the subject of its first major exhibition of a living artist in 1951. He would win numerous awards and have exhibitions at major institutions around the country.

It is truly remarkable that, with all that was going on with Sisson’s life by the middle 50s, he could find the time and energy to save what is now the Maine College of Art. At that time, the then- Portland School of Applied Art was on its last legs. Its sponsor and administrator, the Portland Society of Art, had decided the school was just too much of a liability and had decided to close it.

Sisson managed to convince the society to let him try to turn the school around. He and several other artists did breathe new life into the school and set the course that would result in the school becoming a prominent member of the art education community today.

Sisson was one of the great artists who established the new wave of Maine artists in the 1950s. With artists like William Kienbusch, Fairfield Porter, John Laurent, Dahlov Ipcar, William Thon and others, he was instrumental in the formation of a new element in the Maine art world — associations of artists who energized the formation of a group of nonprofit galleries that made the work of many Maine artists available here for the first time.

In his 80s, Sisson moved to New Mexico. Those familiar with the history of Maine artists will immediately get the connection.

Ever since Robert Henri established the Maine-New Mexico connection with artists like Marsden Hartley, George Bellows and John Marin, Sisson was following a well beaten path. Like the artists before him, Sisson has found a new energy and vision as he began to envision his wonderful tide pools with touches of the southwestern light and color.

As the artist has moved farther and farther away from the actual Maine tide pools that fascinated and motivated him in the beginning, he has evolved a very personal, unique, if less “realistic,” vision of his primary subject.

This exhibition explores the current range of Laurence Sisson’s interpretations of that subject.

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