As new members of Bristol’s Pemaquid Art Gallery this season, Alexandra Perry-Weiss and Sherrie York are displaying striking, realism-based images depicting the beauty of Maine.

Perry-Weiss’s works are colorful, lush oil paintings and, in a completely different medium, York’s works are linocut prints. The two artists have different backgrounds, with Perry-Weiss taking up a lifelong interest in classical oil painting after retiring from 30 years as an executive in home care and hospice agencies and York continuing a life-long career that encompasses environmental education, natural history illustration, birding and printmaking. However, they are similar in their deep appreciation of the coastal Maine world around them.

Alexandra Perry-Weiss raised her family on a blueberry farm in Waldoboro and, after living elsewhere, recently relocated to Bristol after a career in the medical field. She then pursued her art interests by training at the Gibbes School of Art in Charleston, S.C., and continuing her studies in drawing and painting with well known artists from Maine, Colorado, Tennessee, Massachusetts and Michigan, as well as traveling abroad to manage and participate in art workshops in France and Italy.

Sherrie York is a self-taught printmaker whose linocut technique is demonstrated on her website, sherrieyork.com. Her work is well known in the birding world and has been presented in national and international exhibitions, including a major retrospective in 2019 at the Museum of American Bird Art in Massachusetts. She has been an invited artist, artist-in-residence, instructor in field sketching and printmaking both internationally and in Maine at the Farnsworth Art Museum and Audubon’s Hog Island Camp. She also serves on the boards of the Society for Animal Artists and Midcoast Audubon Society.

Perry-Weiss’s oil paintings are richly colored, full of contrasting lights and darks, and often lushly textured with a strong brush stroke structures building her clear and simplified forms. She depicts both the details of the man-made Maine coast — boats, charming houses, coastal villages — as well as soaring landscapes and seascapes with towering clouds, pounding waves and peaceful beaches.

York depicts very accurately the bird species or the details of the natural world involved.

The other 2021 Pemaquid Art Gallery artists include: Barbara Applegate, Debra Arter, Bruce Babb, Julie Babb, Stephen Busch, John Butke, Dianne Dolan, Gwendolyn Evans, Peggy Farrell, Sarah Fisher, Claire Hancock, Kay Sawyer Hannah, Kathleen Horst, Hannah Ineson, Will Kefauver, Jan Kilburn, Barbara Klein, Patti Leavitt, Sally Loughridge, Judy Nixon, Brooke Pacy, Paul Sherman, Cindy Spencer, Liliana Thelander, Kim Traina, Barbara Vanderbilt, Bob Vaughan, Candace Vlcek, Bev Walker and Carol Wiley.

For more information about the gallery or its artists, visit pemaquidartgallery.com

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