The Ogunquit Museum of American Art is thrilled to present the first solo museum exhibition of work by Nicole Wittenberg opening on April 18, 2025, and running through the summer. This presentation of recent works not only explores the deep history of landscape painting within the region, but also the artist’s profound connection with the ephemerality of the natural environment of Maine.
Wittenberg has sought to spend increasingly more time deeply immersed in the dense woods, rugged coastlines, and tranquil wetlands of Maine’s striking geography. Much of Wittenberg’s time en plein air is spent traversing the terrain with a pad of paper and box of pastels, notating the sensation of her surroundings in small studies. These observational encounters, like diary entries from her ventures, become resources in the studio as the artist creates large format paintings that reflect a critical distance and a time that has passed. For the first time both bodies of work will be shown together.
Throughout Wittenberg’s iterative and evolving process, the viewer can intuit a connection to the history of plein air painting that has been a tradition in Maine from early American regional painting to more contemporary international art from Marsden Hartley, Lois Dodd, and Alex Katz. The result is Wittenberg’s immersive approach to painting suffuse with high chroma colors and mesmerizingly fluid passages of pigment.
The exhibition will occur in tandem with a presentation of work by Wittenberg at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art and the release of the artist’s first monograph survey of her work published by Monacelli Press.
