Blue Water Fine Arts Announces 2015 Exhibitions

PORT CLYDE, ME – Blue Water Fine Arts is pleased to present three upcoming exhibitions of internationally acclaimed artist Barbara Ernst Prey’s never before seen work in 2015.

Barbara Ernst Prey, one of America’s most renowned contemporary landscape painters, is the only painter appointed by the President of the U.S. to the National Council on the Arts, the advisory Board to the National Endowment of the Arts. Her paintings are in some of the most important collections worldwide including The Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Kennedy Space Center and the White House. She was commissioned by the President of the United States to paint the official White House Holiday Card and by NASA to document space history. Prey is a graduate of Williams College with a Master’s from Harvard and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to work/paint in Europe and Asia. She is adjunct faculty at Williams College.

Barbara Ernst Prey: Drawings and Prints

Along with Barbara Ernst Prey’s best-known prints, the annual print show will feature never-before exhibited drawings executed on Prey’s travels to Asia, South America, Europe and Africa. In conjunction with this exhibition, Prey is creating a special new series of digital prints of select drawings.

Re/Viewing the American Landscape

Press Preview: Friday, July 17

This monumental exhibition explores the influences of Color Field painters on the large-scale watercolor landscapes of Barbara Ernst Prey. Re/Viewing the American Landscape considers Prey’s distinct and evocative use of color which is both essential to, and occasionally at odds with, her subjects. Typically built up through dozens of thin washes on paper, and often incorporating elements of the landscape itself including water and soil, Prey’s pieces defiantly interpret the American Landscape Tradition through the lens of contemporary Color Field concepts. According to Prey “the heart of my work draws from the color of Helen Frankenthaler and Ellsworth Kelly.” Typical of her characteristic incisive drafting style October displays Prey’s inventive use of the watercolor medium to portray subjects on a monumental scale.

The exhibition presents 30 new works featuring subjects across the United States, including many of national parks.

Oil on Water: Paintings of Land and Sea

Oil on Water is an exhibition that will feature a new series of plein air oil paintings by Barbara Ernst Prey. The series marks a shift in Prey’s technique, and a return, after a 40 year hiatus, from works on paper into the oil paint medium. Keenly aware of her environment, the exhibition is a synthesis of Prey’s dialogue with her surroundings in Port Clyde, ME and her observations on the same location’s evolution over the course of 35 years.

Blue Water Fine Arts is a gallery and exhibition space in Port Clyde, ME.  Opening as a gallery in 2000, BWFA is housed in an historic waterfront structure that has been part of the community since the late 1800s, and has century-old ties to Maine’s prominent artistic tradition.