“Curate” can be an intimidating term. For people less immersed in the art world, a “curated” exhibition often comes with associations of exclusivity, snobbishness, intellectual rigor and a level of erudition that requires prior, or at least specialized, knowledge to understand. While it can certainly be these things, it can also be something much simpler and intensely personal. This is the case with two interesting shows happening in southern Maine.

“Our Beasts” at George Marshall Store Gallery in York (through June 19), focuses on motherhood, specifically caretaking of children with special needs. The works occupying the upstairs gallery are by three artists who are mothers and face this challenge every day: Alicia Ethridge, Celeste Henriquez and Martha Miller. Each one expresses this difficult journey in intimately personal ways that are poignant and palpable – at times anguished, at times sweet and at times fantastical. For all these women, I suspect, their art serves as a kind of vehicle for coping, understanding and redemption.

(The downstairs gallery hosts “Ebb & Flow” and “Hold, Keep, Carry,” related shows by other mother-creators that deal with motherhood, family and heirlooms, but without the element of special needs children.)

Martha Miller presents large-scale charcoal drawings depicting her daughter, Lisbeth, who suffered a traumatic head injury when she was 6 and who still has seizures. They are touching works. “Guardians of ICU” shows Lisbeth in her hospital bed, her stuffed toys lined up along one edge watching over her. “The Visitor” is heartbreaking in light of Lisbeth’s history. It is a portrait of her and Miller, both asleep. We can sense this as perhaps one of few quiet, calm moments in this relationship. Yet Lisbeth’s sleep seems troubled, and Miller’s eyes-closed expression is one of utter exhaustion.

A congenital heart condition necessitated a heart transplant for Alicia Ethridge’s son when he was just 18 months old. Ethridge’s works, dense, colorful and jumbled chaotically (intentionally I believe, to mirror the tumult of emotions of the situation) often show him being shielded from danger or protected in some other way. In “Snake Pit,” what separates him from the writhing reptiles is an enormous red hand. Ethridge is influenced by myth, astrology and animal guardian spirits, so the figure in this painting might be Apollo (protector of the young) or Soteria (who offered salvation from harm) of classical myth. “Mothership” feels quieter. In it, Ethridge wears peace sign earrings and is flanked by a pair of does – symbols of family, gentleness and calm.

The paintings of Celeste Henriquez do something else, however. Her daughter, Abigail, was born with low muscle tone and an atrial septal defect. She was eventually diagnosed as autistic and having intellectual disabilities. What is so powerful about Henriquez’s paintings is that many are seen simultaneously from the artist’s perspective and Abigail’s. It’s as if we’re eavesdropping on a private understanding between mother and daughter.

“Mama Turned into the Backyard Tree” shows Henriquez’s body forming the canopy of the tree, her arms the trunk and fingers rooted in the ground. There are so many ways this can be interpreted, which is what gives the painting such power. It could be the reality of the way Abigail views or imagines her mother. Trees also act as shield and shade, roles Henriquez clearly dons, and also ones Abigail might perceive subliminally (a child screened from the harsh light of reality). The composition places Henriquez above the difficult situation – something we could read as a desire to occasionally detach from the demanding on-the-ground experience of caretaking.

“Mama Swim,” a beautiful small oil, looks initially abstract, just horizontal strokes of thickly impastoed color. But when we look closely, we see two figures, presumably Abigail and Henriquez, backstroking their way across the canvas. This sort of mother-daughter activity is affecting. As in many of the paintings, the figures are rendered in a childlike manner, further emphasizing the perspective of Abigail’s arrested mind. But the thickness of the brushstrokes and the compressed spaces they define also make it look like they are struggling through a much denser, laborious medium than water, making their effort more strenuous than a casual swim.

Henriquez’s mix of abstraction and figuration has a magical quality to it as well. There’s no question these canvases inhabit an altered world – a little bit chaotic, agitated and ego-syntonic, while also being fantastical, innocent and slightly playful in the way of fairy tales.

“29 Mainers” at the Kittery Community Center’s Morgan Gallery (through August) presents images by South Berwick-based portrait photographer Erin Moore. This show, too, was conceived from a very personal point of view. All the images are of Black and brown Maine residents. Moore, who is white, is married to Jermaine Moore, the Black founder of an organization that specializes in teaching diversity, culture, leadership and team development and coaching. Her investment in the Black and brown community, then, is motivated by her own involvement in it as wife of a Black man and mother of an adopted Ethiopian son and three biological biracial daughters.

There’s some work here that feels a little sentimental (children in astronaut or Spider-Man costumes that look like something a proud mom would commission from a commercial studio photographer). And a few images feel somewhat predictable and didactic (a portrait with a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation behind a woman with an Abraham Lincoln tattoo).

“I feel strongly about positive representation,” Moore told me. Nothing wrong with that, as long as it doesn’t feel strained, such as a picture of a young Black girl flexing her muscle like Rosie the Riveter. Her daughter Amaya is pictured in a reproduction of an iconic Black Panther image of Huey Newton sitting in a rattan peacock throne. These are impactful because, aside from being striking, they suggest something we can relate to (in both these cases, from memories of the original images) rather than make it explicit.

But there are many here that also radiate a lot of imagination. In lieu of titles, Moore uses quotations from famous Black figures. There is Carmen with a quote from Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” a photo of a woman with eyes closed wearing elaborate sparkly makeup. It’s straightforward enough, except that Moore’s backdrop for this image is a grid of Carmen’s stunning open blue eyes. The visual effect is of something viewed through a kaleidoscope, a little off-putting, but thoroughly intriguing, too.

Moore’s picture of Claudia, an artist seen through one of her watercolors and accompanied by an Angela Davis quote, is also interesting in the way it relates the subject to her creations. The same for the portrait of Somalian author Abdi Nor Iftin peering from behind an American flag, with a quote from his own memoir, “Call Me American.” It is effective because the flag represents a very immediate and complex reality for Iftin. (Unlike the Emancipation Proclamation, which feels like a remote historical experience tagged onto a portrait where the Lincoln tattoo already speaks volumes.)

The most formally stunning photo is a portrait of Kaia, a music student and vocalist, accompanied by a Maya Angelou quote. She is shot in profile while blowing a balloon through a bubble wand. It has an elegant sculptural quality to it that is reminiscent of Robert Mapplethorpe’s 1984 iconic portrait, also shot in profile, of Ken Moody and Robert Sherman. Both of these images pare back everything to emphasize the sheer naked beauty of a human form.

Jorge S. Arango has written about art, design and architecture for over 35 years. He lives in Portland. He can be reached at: jorge@jsarango.com