Intimate Paradox with Artist Joan Hanley

Opening Reception and Artist Talk

Saturday, September 21st

Reception from 5:30 - 7:30pm

Artist Talk at 6:00pm 

Exhibition Dates

Tuesday, September 3rd – Monday, September 30th  

Artist Joan Hanley is showing her paintings for the first time at Blue Raven Gallery in Rockland, Maine, but she feels like she is coming home. After all, Blue Raven exhibits the work of Fairfield Porter and Milton Avery, who are like north stars for her.  

Hanley says, "I was so moved to find Porter and Avery in the Blue Raven collection. Two of my absolute heroes! I love the quiet tenderness of Milton Avery. You will see his influence in my paintings: flattened planes, simple figures, and domestic scenes. When critics and artists visit my studio the conversation often turns to Fairfield Porter. Such an intelligent and brilliant painter focused on the people and places closest to him. A total inspiration. He loved the French Intimism painters, Edouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard, as I do. I’m humbled to share space with him!” 

Hanley’s studio is currently in southern New Hampshire, but she spent her childhood in New York City, where at MOMA she was inspired by Milton Avery, Fairfield Porter, Vuillard, and Bonnard.  Alice Neel juried her into her first show, and Hanley works in Neel’s tradition of intimate American painting that also includes Fairfield Porter, Milton Avery and many other Maine painters.  Hanley’s paintings address intimacy and technology as it impacts our domestic spaces and relationships in our contemporary world. 

The exhibition includes both large scale works in gouache or oil paint, and small oil paintings. Joan Hanley’s sketchbooks will also be on display, which provide a look into her drawings of intimate moments that are later developed in her canvases. 

Hanley’s work is held in collections across the US, Canada and Europe. She has exhibited at the Fitchburg Art Museum, MA, Brattleboro Museum, VT, the Mariposa Museum, NH, the University Museum of Contemporary Art at UMass, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Attleboro Museum, MA among others.

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