Exhibition | From The Ground Up

Hannah Berta collages with paint and cut paper, the slight rise of cut silhouettes casts shadows to half reveal the painted surface below. A delicate and close view of ecology dominates the form with lightness and depth. The chosen plants can be read with the assigned virtues and cultural meanings of their species, symbolism beyond their overt reference to fragility, sustenance, and life cycles. Berta uses color as an aura for her subjects. Glowing hues of green and pink and deep pools of midnight blue create meaning and interest in her paintings.

Jessica Lee Ives centers the human figure within a dense and dappled scene, blurring the distinction between figure and forest. Ives paints from photographic sources of her own explorations to engage with the idea that people and nature are interconnected. Her energetic brushwork animates ferns and trees, she paints light pushing through to create a porous scene, enveloping and attaching the small scale of the figure to its surroundings.

Amelia MacDougall uses the tactile density of hooked fiber to give weight to moments that feel both fleeting and fixed. Her series of deer portraits read as an analog stop-motion animation, slowing the viewer to take in each turn of the head. In her depiction of a deer bed, MacDougall emphasizes the ground itself as a site of contact, where movement leaves marks and memory is held in texture.

Dean McCrillis approaches the natural world through scenes of hunting, fishing, and exploration. His paintings capture both physical immersion in landscape and the forging of identity through nature. There is an urgency to his brushwork and an immediacy to the tight framing of his compositions that suggest a blunt interest in his surroundings. Nature here is not a backdrop but a proving ground, a place of camaraderie, solitude, and self-definition.

Nathaniel Meyer paints a heightened view of Maine’s idyllic scenery. His classically designed compositions illustrate dramatic skies over sculptural coastlines, and majestic trees and abundant flowers emerging from the soil.  In Hidden Impacts, a painted ornamental border of stylized motifs from within the depicted scene serves as a trompe l’oeil frame. The echoed pine trees and flowers amplify the experience of the painting’s iconic scene.

Sal Taylor Kydd extends the exhibition’s meditation on belonging and perception with her botanical photographs. Her images emerge from a deliberate slowing down, an act of sustained looking that transforms observation into a kind of grounding. As she writes, the natural world becomes a stabilizing force—something “solid to hold on to” amid impermanence. Her work invites viewers into that same attentive state, where light, form, and stillness open onto deeper connection.