BRUNSWICK

Passages, an exhibition of photographs and fine art prints by Judith and Burke Long, opens at Thornton Oaks in Brunswick on April 5. The Thornton Oaks Art Committee will host a public reception and artists’ talk at 4 p.m. in the Events Room, Thornton Oaks, 25 Thornton Way in Brunswick. The show runs through the end of May.

Both artists ground their work in material subjects, such as plant roots, glass objects, or stairways. Yet their images are not simply literal representations — they involve abstract patterns of light, shadow, and color.

“I spotted a gravestone in Edinburgh last year,” said Judith Long. “A rather plain memorial to a Colonel and Mrs. William Geddes with a twist of dormant winter roots creeping across the carved inscription. So, I captured the image. When I look at the photograph now I think of the tangled names and memories of a family’s history, or their roots.”

The exhibition includes “Fire Suite,” a series of studio photographs by Burke Long that manipulate light and glass to create abstract art.

“The picture shouldn’t look like an ordinary vase, for example,” Burke said. “I’m an illusionist. In these works, I suggest dormant energy becoming fiery heat, but I also invite you to enter a landscape of sculpted layers of color and light.”

A photographer and printmaker, Judith Long is a founding member of Points of View Artists, and a member of Circling the Square Fine Art Press in Gardiner. She regularly exhibits her works at Points of View Art Gallery, Harlow Gallery, Maine College of Art, and the annual Maine Photography Show in Boothbay Harbor. Last year, her prints were included in a major international exhibition organized by Circling the Square Fine Arts Press and the Estampería Quiteño, Ecuador’s premier printmakers’ collective.

Burke Long has exhibited his photographs in the Maine Photography Show, Gallery Framing, Maine College of Art, Harlow Gallery, and the Holocaust and Human Rights Center in Augusta. He and his work were featured in the October 2014 issue of the Bowdoin Magazine.