by Julia Einstein*
When I visit the gardens at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, my thoughts fill with imagined images of Langlais sculptures leaping to visit the Zorach’s. Today, my focus is on composing views to create my upcoming OMAA Garden Invention. It’s designed to be participatory, as a way to invite new perspectives into my work that are unique to this spot.
Imagine a transparent canvas—one you are able to view from an artist’s perspective through the garden to the seascape beyond. If you are visiting OMAA that day, you’ll come upon my studio, set up in the garden, with large paintings on easels, as a sort of window from which you can see through to play with the interpretive space. I’m interested in that space where a viewer encounters a work of art, and is enticed to explore a bit to discover ideas, and to make their own meaning. And, if you arrive at the museum in the morning, you’ll meet a group of third grade students as they play with selected views, use their “artist’s eyes” and look into the painting’s view.
My studio is filled with flowers gathered, posed, and painted as portraits. I’m inspired by flowers picked from the garden, rather than those cultivated in the greenhouse. I love the subject of window views with that visual play of inside-outside in the tradition of still life from Henri Matisse to Jane Freilicher. For my Garden Intervention, I’ll start a painting in my studio to continue on view in the OMAA gardens. I will share my creative space.
*Artist Julia Einstein’s OMAA Garden Intervention, “The Artist’s Garden,” takes place in the OMAA sculpture gardens Wednesday, June 14 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
