One distinction we don’t make often enough is between the roles played by brushwork and paint itself. There is a graphic quality to Maine painting in general that is tied to the high esteem we put on mark-making and brushwork. But brushwork bravado isn’t the only thing you can appreciate. Sometimes, artists indulge in the […]

In 2008, the screenwriter Mark Boal sought an appointment with a retired special-ops agent. Boal was researching a movie about the fruitless search for Osama bin Laden in the caves of Tora Bora six years before, and he wanted insight into how U.S. forces gathered intelligence. The agent agreed to meet, but under strict conditions. […]

There’s nothing like stumbling across good food where you least expect it. The small village center of Winthrop, far from big city lights, indie films and Manhattans on the rocks, offered up a delightful surprise. In October, Maine artist Amy Stacey Curtis exhibited her massive work, “Space,” across the street from The Flaky Tart in […]

J.R. MACKENZIE

Chris Ewan’s fictional tale is told intelligently and with plenty of action.

The Old Port – and hundreds of visitors – revel in Merry Madness.

Lyn Dillies puts more magic in “Magic of Christmas.” The Massachusetts-based illusionist joins the Portland Symphony Orchestra for this year’s “Magic of Christmas” concerts at Merrill Auditorium, 20 Myrtle St., Portland. Music director Robert Moody has conceived a program that includes the drama of magic, traditional stories from the Bible and festive holiday cheer. In […]

We have this idea in America that important paintings should be big. Really big. While this is a holdover from Abstract Expressionism, the idea goes much deeper into 19th-century Paris-led culture of giant narrative tableaux. Yet it can be argued that Modernism painting developed as a response to these absurdly affected giant paintings. This came […]

I don’t know whether it was deliberate or not, but the Portland Symphony Orchestra has programmed for its Jan. 27 concert a strange cousin of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” the 100th anniversary of whose tumultuous premiere is being celebrated this concert season. With his marketing antennae fully extended, ballet master Sergei Diaghilev was looking for […]