Marshall Wilkes

Recent Publications

Philip Frey: Here and Now In the past twenty years, Philip Frey has developed into one of Maine’s finest landscape painters. Known as a brilliant colorist, Frey paints Maine’s harbors and islands with a bold palette that captures the light and moods of his home state, from the streets of Ellsworth and Portland to Monhegan and Acadia National Park.

With an introduction by curator George Kinghorn, and essays by art critics Daniel Kany and Carl Little, Philip Frey: Here and Now presents the first in-depth look at Frey’s body of work. Kinghorn highlights Frey’s remarkable ability to render complex motifs by way of dynamic planes of color, while Kany and Little place the artist in an art-historical context. In response to Frey’s role in Maine’s evolving contemporary art scene, Kany sums it up best: “Frey’s art occupies the nexus between contemporary painting and brushy traditionalism. If there is a focus to this new direction in Maine painting, his art is it.”

This book offers readers thoughtful commentary and a glorious, full-bodied color representation of Frey’s work, much of it created over the last decade. His paintings are imbued with an immediacy that reflects his commitment to being “in the present”, whether responding to a panoramic view from the summit of Cadillac Mountain, a working waterfront, or an intimate interior.

Frey: Here and Now is a gift to aficionados of Maine art. Here is a painter whose sense of place is profound and whose art is a feast for the eyes.

William Irvine: At Home William Irvine believes that every artist is born with a small set of poems to express, and this unique collection of narrative paintings explores his signature motifs. Lending grace and delight to daily activities, his paintings show women celebrating spring with forsythia, calling in their cats at dusk, gossiping, planting trees, or sunbathing sans clothing. Men sip their morning coffee, repair windows, gather fishing gear and wait for the fog to lift. Mermaids, sheep, and sleeping sailors populate rugged, elemental scenes. And always, soaring overhead in the seascapes for which Irvine is best-known, there are gulls, whose cries, soaring flights, and calculated stillness captivate the painter. Irvine moved to Maine in 1968 and was immediately drawn to the fishing villages of Corea and Jonesport, whose tidy houses reminded him of the white farms dotting the green hills of Scotland, where he grew up. William Irvine: At Home joins William Irvine: A Painter’s Journey in establishing Irvine as a Maine and American master.