The Gallery at the Grand | 9/10-9/29 | Kennebunk, ME

Sea and Sky

Maine Art Hill presents a show of new coast-inspired works by Janis H. Sanders at the Gallery at the Grand

Janis H. Sanders grew up in Upstate New York where he observed, “Man’s integration with and interdependence with nature was clear to me at an early age with the immersion in the agricultural environment a stone’s throw from home.” Today, living in New England and painting along the East Coast, he seeks out “a lobster shack along a wharf at the rugged rocky coast of Maine or a [weathered, one-time] fish shack that now serves as a summer residence at the water’s edge for some lucky person or family on the soft hot sandy beaches of Cape Cod.” He continues, “I try to convey that moment of joy and presence through the scenes of my paintings, without intention for nostalgia or sentimentality, realizing though that those elements are inherent in those ancient subjects, giving our imaginations a bit of free reign to roam like the clouds, wondering who has lived and worked here and how their lives were along the way, how different and how the same as yours and mine.”Island Edge, oil on panel, 30 x 30"

Sanders speaks of the “essence of a place.” His painting Island Edge depicts the house and studio Rockwell Kent designed and built on Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine. Kent wrote that the islanders warned him “that it would never stand up against stormy weather. But since there was grass growing in the scanty soil on that site, I was certain the sea would never reach it. But for a year or two after I built the house, I had nightmares over its being washed away and of myself swimming about in the wreckage.” Today, 115 years later, it stands proudly on the rocks above the sea. Sanders paints it as a natural part of the landscape.Light Splash, oil on panel, 24 x 24"

Seacoast & Path, oil on panel, 30 x 30"

His painting technique allows him to capture the immediacy of a moment. Often painting in plein air, he applies paint thickly and energetically with a palette knife creating animated surfaces.

He celebrates the vastness of the sky with which he begins each painting and which brings scale and light to the scene. He says, “The sky is light, some days slightly purple, sometimes hazy cream, clear aqua, rosy, peach, celadon, we are immersed in it…My self-assigned task for each work is to convey the ethereal ‘thing’ of light in paint, as the sun casts its breath on the world.”Delicate Balance, oil on panel, 30 x 30"