Exhibition | COASTLINE: series and progressions
August 15 - September 13, 2024
SIRI BECKMAN
TOM CURRY
SIMON VAN DER VEN
5-7pm THURSDAY, AUGUST 15
Opening Reception and Camden Art Walk
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 FROM 1PM
Simon van der Ven Artist Talk
$500
Siri Beckman
Two Deer
wood engraving, 1.325x4.125”
$1,500
Siri Beckman
The Bubbles, Acadia National Park
linocut, 8x10" (framed to 15.5x17")
$500
Siri Beckman
Kitchen Still Life
wood engraving, 3x2"
$650
Siri Beckman
Moonlit Islands
wood engraving, 4.25x3.25" (framed to 11.75x10.5")
$650
Siri Beckman
The Elvers
wood engraving, 6x4.75" (framed to 12.75x10.75")
$550
Siri Beckman
Cod Fishing
wood engraving, 4.5x2.75" (framed to 11.75x9")
$650
Siri Beckman
Otter Cove
wood engraving, 4.5x3.5" (framed to 12x9.75")
$525
Siri Beckman
Before Dawn
wood engraving, 6x3"
$16,000
Tom Curry
Arc-en-Ciel
oil on birch panel, 36x43"
$3,200
Tom Curry
Hub Island
oil on birch panel, 16x20"
$3,800
Tom Curry
Salt Marsh, Ipswich
oil on birch panel, 18x24"
$1,800
Tom Curry
New Leaves
oil on birch panel, 12x16"
SOLD
Tom Curry
Yellow House
oil on birch panel, 24x60"
$5,800
Tom Curry
Moonlight Over Ogunquit
oil on birch panel, 30x22"
$14,000
Tom Curry
Rising Tide
oil on birch panel, 24x60"
$3,200
Tom Curry
Meadow
oil on birch panel, 16x20"
$1,200
Simon van der Ven
From the Wrack Line - Bend
acrylic and found object impressions on board, 10x11.75"
$1,800
Simon van der Ven
From the Wrack Line - Under the Paisley Sky
acrylic and found object impressions on board, 20x12"
$5,400
Simon van der Ven
From the Wrack Line - Five Square
acrylic and found object impressions on board, 30x24"
$2,200
Simon van der Ven
From the Wrack Line - Aquari
acrylic and found object impressions on board, 16x20"
$1,600
Simon van der Ven
From the Wrack Line - Walk the Line
acrylic and found object impressions on board, 15x10"
$800
Simon van der Ven
From the Wrack Line - View
acrylic and found object impressions on board, 6.5x6.5"
$750
Simon van der Ven
From the Wrack Line - Blue Hill
acrylic and found object impressions on board, 5.5x6.25"
$800
Simon van der Ven
From the Wrack Line - Range
acrylic and found object impressions on board, 7.5x7.5"
$750
Simon van der Ven
From the Wrack Line - Bosch
acrylic and found object impressions on board, 5.5x7.75"
$1,100
Simon van der Ven
From the Wrack Line - The Three
acrylic and found object impressions on board, 8x8"
Siri Beckman uses the intricacy of wood engraving to create atmosphere, light, movement, and intimacy. Wood engravings are small-scale works cut into the endgrain of an English boxwood block. Siri Beckman hand carves into the hard wood with small tools, the surface is inked, and the carved lines become the whites of her image. We can see the energy of her hand in the resulting relief prints. She has consistently returned to the medium as a way to share her love of nature, whether on the coast of Maine or in her many residencies at national parks across the country. There is a throughline in Beckman’s prints of delicate line quality and evocative scenes connecting us to nature. Siri has spent a career exploring how far the humble line can go, showing us just how expressive and atmospheric a black and white line can be.
Siri Beckman (b. 1942) received her BA in Art History from Lake Forest College and her MFA in Book Arts and Printmaking from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA. Beckman has been the recipient of numerous awards and residencies, and her work is in many collections, including the Library of Congress; Boston Public Library; permanent collection of Harvard University; Farnsworth Museum; and Portland Museum of Art. Beckman has participated in five residence programs at US National Parks, including Acadia National Park; Rocky Mountain National Park; Hovenweep National Park; Badlands National Park; Grand Canyon National Park; and Mesa Verde National Park. Working with delicately crafted wood engravings, Beckman builds lively scenes full of action and movement. She captures the essence of a space in her petite prints, her work extends to masterful book illustration as well. Siri lives and works in Bath, Maine. The Prints of Siri Beckman, Engraving a Sense of Place was published by Down East Books in 2023.
“For those of us who have lived a long time in the Maine landscape, it is as if Tom Curry has rendered the ache of the familiar and the beloved.” - Susan Hand Shetterly, Down East Magazine
The small island of Chatto is the principal subject of more than 60 of Tom Curry's paintings. Curry returns to the familiar scene as he studies the shifts in color and feeling of a place from day to day. Curry has captured the modest island in all expressions of light, atmosphere, season, time of day, and in doing so, he has illustrated the nuances of perception and come closer to authentically describing a place. His Chatto island paintings almost become a timeline, a map of Curry’s career as a painter.
Curry is also known as a painter of the many moods and personalities of the Maine landscape, ranging from the fields and woods inland to coastal rocks and beaches. His impasto layered paint application and vibrant interactive colors are a signature to the way he sees and feels his way through life as a painter of Maine.
Tom Curry is a noted landscape painter who paints both "the raw, wild places and the small villages and harbors" near his studio in Brooklin, Maine. Curry studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, Yale School of Fine Art and University of Massachusetts. His work has been featured in publications such as the Island Journal, The Boston Globe, The New Yorker, Art New England, Down East, Ellsworth American and on the cover of the book East Hope (Penguin Books, 2009). Curry's works are held in the collections of the Delaware Art Museum, Wheaton College Art Museum, U.S. State Department, Federal Reserve Bank, Boston Red Sox, Putnam Investments, Fidelity Investments and General Electric. A plein air painter, Curry is drawn to work outdoors "where I can be in direct contact with the clear, searing light or dense fog, the heat of the sun or a frigid wind, the sounds of crickets or distant drone of a fishing boat, the smell of salt." Curry's Chatto Island series has been captured in his first monograph, Island: Paintings by Tom Curry, published by Down East Books in 2012 and 2019.
"It is estimated that there are over a million and a half lost or discarded lobster traps lying on the ocean floor just off the coast of Maine. These traps get tossed and tumbled by storm and surge. Though slow to decay, they eventually break apart. I find pieces of them in the wrack line. I don’t know how many years it has taken these pieces to return to shore. I do know nature has acted upon them and they have become something else. These pieces and this process are the seeds of this series of mixed media paintings.” - Simon van der Ven
Whether in his ceramic or painted work, Simon van der Ven works thematically, diving deep into the forms and ideas of his practice. In his Wrack Line series, van der Ven collects cast off objects and pieces of wreckage from the intertidal zone along the coast. His painted works are informed and imprinted by these pieces of driftwood, lobster traps, and parts of broken up boats. He paints, sands down, imprints into, and builds back out. He layers complimentary colors, and breaks back through to see what was underneath. Time and tide take their toll on anything left behind in the ocean, and that long process is mirrored in the constant push and pull of addition and subtraction in van der Ven's working methods.
Simon van der Ven is a ceramicist based in Lincolnville, Maine. He received an undergraduate degree in printmaking with a minor in sculpture, worked as a goldsmith and carpenter/builder before becoming an award winning high school art teacher. Seventeen years in the classroom were interrupted only by a year-long sabbatical in the south of France, where van der Ven worked in Les Buffile clay studio and studied painting and critical theory at the Marchutz School. Later, while still teaching, van der Ven earned an MFA concentrating his studies on ceramics and drawing. Simon has been an adjunct instructor at the University of Maine Augusta, University College Rockland, and Unity College. He’s facilitated workshops at Haystack Mountain School of Craft, and has been a resident artist at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado and Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Maine.